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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22378294">Binds (If You Let Them) That Set You Free</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ebonynemesis/pseuds/ebonynemesis'>ebonynemesis</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(kind of)lighthearted, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Eventual Happy Ending, Getting Together, M/M, Mentions of ShikaTema, Neji Lives, Post War, Post-Canon, Self-Harm, Slow Build, chapter 700 does not exist, dealing with loss from war, depictions of ptsd, geniuses being idiots in love, not your average soulmate AU, soulbonds/soulmarks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 15:14:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>29,203</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22378294</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ebonynemesis/pseuds/ebonynemesis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>‘A mark that ties you to someone else is bondage, to me, it’s no different from this.’ Neji tapped his forehead protector, ‘and I never want it, however it manifests.’ </i>
</p><p>Shikamaru should think twice before saying yes to what he thought was a favour for his friend.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hyuuga Neji/Nara Shikamaru</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>67</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>270</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. 1.0</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span class="big">PART 1</span>
</p><p>0. </p><p>Shikamaru weighed his words, rubbed his thumb across the indented kanji on the shogi piece in his hand, before placing it on the board, and said: </p><p>‘You know most people consider it a rite, receiving your soulmark, symbolic of coming of age or something, signifies you’re no longer a child.’</p><p>Neji’s eyes narrowed for one second before he took Shikamaru’s piece, and his heart skipped a beat when Shikamaru squinted in that particular way indicative of the fact that he was withholding a smirk, and only realised his mistake after Shikamaru retaliated, blowing open his defences. </p><p>Neji, unwilling to concede, reinforced his front-line even though he could see Shikamaru’s plan of attack. </p><p>‘It’s not a privilege, I don’t care for that sentiment.’ Neji replied, as he attempted to salvage whatever formation he had been trying to maintain as Shikamaru’s force speared into his fortress. ‘A mark that ties you to someone else is bondage, it’s—it’s no different from this.’ He tapped his forehead protector as he moved his knight back to a defensive position as Shikamaru leant forward, his eyebrows furrowing into a little frown and his nostrils flaring as if he could smell the victory. </p><p>‘A bond is a bond, and I never want it, however it manifests.’ </p><p>Shikamaru checked him as he looked up from where he was hunched over the shogi board. ‘Do you even know if it’s legit, I mean, given your kekkei genkai it could very well be—’ </p><p>Neji clenched his fist. ‘I’m less than inclined to find out. Even if someone within my household—Hinata-sama, for example—were to end up with the same mark as mine, I doubt it would sway my aversion to it any less. Besides, it’s not like that will stop Naruto from barging into the Hyuuga household and taking her away and disregarding the dictates of fate or customs. My other cousins are too young for me to fathom the idea of them being my bonded pair.’ He screwed his eyes shut at the sentiment. ‘It just reminds me that if I have children one day they are going to be bearing the same burden due to their bloodline, that their foreheads will be as marred as mine, and to subject anyone to the same fate that I suffer—it pains me more than wooden spikes through my torso.’ He scrunched his robes with his fists, his face twisted into a grimace. </p><p>Shikamaru sat back, still studying the board though the match was a clearly decided one by this point, and the silence rested upon the shogi board until Shikamaru let out a small breath. </p><p>‘It’s your turn.’ </p><p>Neji spared a glance at the board. ‘I concede.’ </p><p>Shikamaru shook his head, ‘Not even a challenge today, guess this mark thing has your mind occupied, huh?’ </p><p>Neji flipped his wrist until his sleeve fell away, a pale forearm emerged from the loose folds like a fresh lotus root being pulled from the early summer pond. In between two visible protrusions of wrist bones, a tiny leaf glinted in the sun, black and wet, like fresh calligraphy ink. </p><p>Shikamaru glimpsed it, feigning a lack of interest as he packed away the shogi set.</p><p>‘Does it—’ He wanted to press it with his thumb to see if ink flowed out from Neji’s skin. ‘Does it feel weird?’ </p><p>Neji studied his own arm as he activated his byakugan, twisting his hands multiple ways as the protruding veins around his temples seemed to visibly pulsate with blood flow. </p><p>Finally, Neji dropped his hand. ‘Unlike the cursed seals, I can’t see any chakra flowing to this mark. But there’s something about it that I cannot comprehend. It, it almost feels like I’m looking at a shadow, like it’s more than just an aesthetic addition.’ </p><p>He glanced up at Shikamaru, who held his gaze in silent nonchalance. </p><p>‘Yin release?’ Shikamaru finally whispered into the still air of the afternoon. </p><p>Neji hid his hands within the folds of his robe. ‘Might very well be so. I have heard that anbu tends to get them removed as it is a way of identification—’ </p><p>Shikamaru listened to the silence, the summer cicadas beating their wings noisily against the bark of the great big tree. He looked up at the dense foliage, the shadows between the leaves almost blocking out the sunlight entirely. As a child he had loved climbing it, especially after he learnt how to manipulate chakra, there were branches that were almost grown on purpose, so level, that he could almost stroll along them to reach the roof of the house, and reach the undisrupted view of the clouds. </p><p>‘So,’ Shikamaru took a deep breath. ‘I’m guessing the purpose of your visit today is more than a friendly game of shogi.’ </p><p>Neji was still and stoic, as silent as the windless courtyard, he could very well have been one of the stone statues that decorated it. Shikamaru sighed deeply. ‘Why me? It sounds like such a drag, you know how much I dislike—’ </p><p>Neji raised his head, his pupils so pale, almost becoming one with the whites of his eyes and his pallid skin that seemed untouched by the deathly warm summer that had tanned Shikamaru at least two shades darker. ‘Who else can I turn to?’ Neji said, his voice low and even yet betraying a kind of hesitation, almost like some kind of untamed fear. </p><p>Shikamaru pinched his eyebrows, ‘Such a drag,’ He muttered under his breath, ‘I don’t even know if it could be done.’ </p><p>Neji, re-livened, leaned forward on his hands, towards Shikamaru. ‘There must be a way, the anbu were able to do it.’ </p><p>‘And now the son of the Konoha war-leader is supposed to know about it?’ Shikamaru crossed his arms over his chest, ‘How would I possibly—’ </p><p>‘Your father never had the mark on his wrist.’ </p><p>Shikamaru glared at Neji, ‘Wow, that was uncalled for, Hyuuga.’ </p><p>‘—neither did Inoichi-san.’ Neji’s lips thinned, ‘I mean no disrespect Shikamaru, I just—’ He looked down at his own wrist. ‘I have no one else to ask for such favours.’ </p><p>Whatever response he came up with was knocked out by a sudden gust of wind, and all he could hear for one split moment, was static. The same left behind in his earpiece after—after his father and Inoichi jii-san’s sacrifice. And as usual Shikamaru had to resist the urge to look over his shoulder and remind himself that there were no pending juubi explosions, just the ghosts in his mind. </p><p>Shikamaru unfolded his arms, leaning back on his elbows. ‘Fine, I’ll consult the books.’ </p><p>Neji bowed his head in a silent gratitude which Shikamaru pointedly ignored. </p><p>‘Do you even know what it is? As in genus.’ Shikamaru asked, after a silence long enough for the shadows to grow amongst the foliage of the trees. </p><p>‘I’m not really sure I want to find out.’ Neji didn’t pull his hands out of his sleeves. ‘I’d rather part with it with minimal effort.’ </p><p>Shikamaru refused to turn his head and study Neji, ‘Ino can probably tell you.’ He said, by way of diversion. ‘She’s extremely into this whole destiny and soulmates shit, she’s literally counting down the days until she turns eighteen and gets hers.’ </p><p>Neji relaxed into a less formal position, dangling his legs over the edge of the engawa, turning towards the shadows of the trees lilting in the courtyard. </p><p>‘What about you?’ </p><p>Shikamaru leaned back, all the way, until he was lying down on the planked flooring. </p><p>‘As long as it’s not some troublesome woman.’</p><p>‘Temari-san?’ Neji asked. </p><p>‘Who knows, deal with it when it happens.’ Shikamaru said, closing his eyes. </p><p>In the courtyard, the leaves rustled, as if unable to stand the ensuing quiet. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. 1.1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>1.</p><p>‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’ Neji asked. </p><p>It was three days later after that shogi match, and Shikamaru had given Neji a message to meet him in the outskirts of the village, long after the curfews. Without exchanging a word Shikamaru had led them through the dark forest, the paths beneath their feet covered by soft mossy undergrowth that grazed Neji’s exposed toes through his sandals. After ten minutes, Neji finally broke the silence by asking Shikamaru the above question. </p><p>Shikamaru stopped and looked back, Neji was silent and straight, pale as the beam of moonlight blocked by the canopy above them, like he had been plated by a thin sheen of silver, and gave Neji a smirk. ‘Do you not trust me, Neji-kun?’ </p><p>Neji’s eyes widened, and unexpectedly a small blush crept up on those pale cheekbones, as he shook his head. Shikamaru felt himself burn up with a shame knowing he had made light of something so serious for Neji but shook the discomfort off with a small shrug and turned to the path ahead. </p><p>‘We’ll get there soon enough.’ He cleared his throat and said. </p><p>Not twenty metres later a small clearing appeared before them, the ground flat and smooth, made of slabbed stone, frosted in moonlight. A few deer grazed on the thin blades of grass that grew from the gaps of the slabs, they dispersed at the wave of Shikamaru’s hands.  </p><p>Neji looked around at the almost perfect octagonal clearing as his eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness of the moon. </p><p>‘This is the sacred forest of your family.’ </p><p>Shikamaru nodded, reaching for the chalk within his vest pocket. ‘I hope you don’t mind coming to a place this secluded. I trained in these forests, and when it comes to yin-release I find myself more in control of my chakra around these woods.’ </p><p>‘Didn’t you bury an <em>Akatsuki</em> here?’ Neji folded his arms across his chest, the sleeves of his robe billowing slightly in the night breeze. </p><p>Shikamaru grinned, ‘Technically only his head.’ He began drawing symbols upon the slate rocks. Neji looked on, curious. </p><p>‘This is like fuuin jutsu.’ He observed. ‘but I don’t recognise any of these symbols.’ </p><p>'That's because it's not fuuin-jutsu.' Shikamaru said, wiping out the latest character having made a mistake, before he frowned, and wiped out the entire line. ‘Could you just sit down over there?’ He pointed at the space in the centre outlined by the innermost circle of the chalk. ‘You’re distracting me.’ </p><p>Neji, noticing that the writings were too dense for him to step through, did a backflip and landed in the centre, Shikamaru rolled his eyes at the antics. </p><p>Finished with his writing, Shikamaru joined Neji at the centre next to Neji and quietly read through the characters encircling them. He turned to face Neji. ‘You’re sitting the wrong way.’ </p><p>Neji, having already sat down cross-legged, looked up, ‘I thought you said to…’   </p><p>‘You need to face that way,’ Shikamaru said, sitting down at an angle and pointing in front of him.</p><p>Neji stood, ‘You want me to give you my back?’ </p><p>Shikamaru nodded. </p><p>‘Do you know what you’re doing?’ </p><p>Shikamaru pursed his lips as his face twisted into a frown. 'If you’re going to ask me at every turn—’  </p><p>‘I just want to know what’s going on.’ </p><p>Shikamaru pinched the skin between his eyebrows. ‘Mendoukusai.’ </p><p>Neji swallowed, ‘Shikamaru—’</p><p>‘Look this isn’t fuuin-jutsu or anything like that. It’s, let's call it soul-release—it's not that different from what all yin-release users has to channel before they execute more complex ninjutsu. Except for of course the exception to every rule, Naruto, who somehow turned yin-chakra into an energy ball, of all things. I’m never going to understand how that boy—what I’m trying to say is I know what I’m doing. So do you trust me or not.’ </p><p>‘Shikamaru.’ Neji did not answer him directly. ‘You’re sure you are ok with helping me?’ </p><p>Shikamaru closed his eyes, when he opened them the clouds have covered the moon and the shadows disappeared around them. ‘Of course I’m sure.’ </p><p>Neji nodded. ‘Then I trust you.’ He said, as he sat down facing away from Shikamaru. </p><p>‘Close your eyes.’ Shikamaru instructed, as Neji complied resting his hands upon his knees like he was meditating. Shikamaru took a deep breath, and placed his hands upon Neji’s shoulders, feeling the other bristle. </p><p>He wasn’t going to implicate Neji in the multiple forbidden archives he broke into in the last three days, Shikamaru swallowed, as he started reciting the memorised passages, feeling his chakra channels realigning. Nor was he going to tell Neji that he had knocked himself out more than five times already in the past day alone attempting the jutsu and realised that he had no more tries left in his body and realised that he could not afford further delays. <em>Yin-release is the path of unbecoming,</em> his father had taught him, when he first began noticing the shadows around him, it was knowing what is not there, and following the nothing, instead of altering it.</p><p><em> Sorry, oyaji. </em>Shikamaru thought, as the chalk characters lit up around him, the leaves rustled loudly. Shikamaru closed his eyes and visualised Neji in front of him, his back to him. The outline of dark hair on white robes materialised like a shadow against a candlelight, and Neji stood in a puddle of reflective black ripples despite his stillness, so vivid Shikamaru could almost feel the way his breath flowed through his chakra points. Shikamaru gasped, he had never been able to visualise the void this clearly, the shadows beneath Neji’s feet were his to manipulate. He felt more connected to his own chakra than ever, even more than the time when Naruto imbued him with that endless supply of the kyuubi’s energy. </p><p>He circled Neji, the dark waterfall of Neji’s hair facing him no matter how much he turned. <em> What is not there </em>, Shikamaru recalled his father’s words, and reached out, the distance between him and Neji’s back growing, he felt like he was being pulled backwards, and formed a seal for shadow release. </p><p>The darkness grasped him, instead of the other way around, and snaked around his body, dragging him down into the pitch. His head spun and he looked towards his feet to see the bottom of Neji’s feet above him and Neji beyond him, still faced in the opposite direction, and Shikamaru gasped as his head tilted back to see the that the glowing chalky characters have formed a three intersecting axes that stretched and expanded in all three dimensions, illuminating the darkness. Shikamaru stepped forward, a dark ripple forming at his feet—he was in.</p><p>He stepped closer to one of the axes but couldn’t seem to get close to the letters. The realm held firm and didn’t seem to attack him as he thought it might. It frightened him that with their trust it was this easy for him to invade a person. How could Ino possess this ability and feel at ease every day, maybe this was why she chose to surround herself with dead plants instead of—</p><p>As if in echo of that thought, something flitted out the corner of Shikamaru’s eyes, towards the centre where the axes seemed to converge. </p><p>Shikamaru followed one of them and walked towards it, the glowing rows of characters didn’t appear to get larger nor did the convergence point appear to get any nearer. However the characters seemed to brighten from the glowworm-like-flicker into a steady candlelight. Shikamaru felt something brush against his arm but could not see the shapes that surrounded him, but he knew the feeling of the shadowy touch all too well—the familiar energy of the shadows taking hold of him for the briefest moment before he takes hold of them after he forms the hand seal.</p><p>Shikamaru concentrated on the sensation, searching for sharpest pinprick of contact. He never thought that the soul realm was this peaceful, he would have expected a chaos of sensory overload, but the darkness and isolated vectors of light were almost comforting. Shikamaru reached his hand out and grazed the dense presence around him, he could definitely feel it now—the foliage, like a forest canopy, and the ever solidifying target of his search.    </p><p>Was it because this was Neji that he’s in such a peaceful and familiar forest? What would have happened if he performed this jutsu on someone else, and what form would the soul-realm take, if the soulmark was not plant-based, for example—  </p><p>Almost to punish his distraction, something flickered in front of him. Shikamaru stopped breathing. </p><p>The familiar shape could not be mistaken for anything else, even though Shikamaru had only seen it that one time when the topic had been brought up. Neji’s soulmark, silhouetted against the glow of the chalky characters, dangled in front of him from an unseen branch, quivered, like its sinews were pulsating with blood.</p><p>With every muscle in his body tensed, Shikamaru reached towards the leaf. </p><p>He heard a snigger behind him that caused the hair on the back of his neck to stand up. The voice sounded too familiar. Out of place in this other-realm. He must have made a mistake, because when he turned around, he saw a figure reclining on a branch of the invisible tree. The posture equally familiar as the snigger. Shikamaru approached with growing sense of dread, and knew, before he even got close enough to make out the features, the terror that awaited him.</p><p>Thin eyebrows above tightly shut eyes, hands pillowed beneath his upwards ponytail the shape of a pineapple, back even in recline curving into a slouch that made Shikamaru nauseous. </p><p>‘What—’ Shikamaru frowned, looking around frantically no longer able to decipher the characters that have now formed vectors with their dotted lights, before he whipped his head around to the figure in front of him. He knew it must be himself, not an image, because his chakra knew each minute distinction like the needle-thin tendrils of shadows he had learnt to control with ease, the familiar energy radiating off from the apparently still reflection, like his own heartbeat. </p><p>He reached out his hand, until he brushed the bushy ends of the spiky hair he gathered every morning. The other opened his eyes, and each detailed twitch of his face, down to the slightly exasperated frown, was every part of his own. The reality was what scared him—he had anticipated, had half-hoped for it to be some kind of shadowy apparition—another form of manifestation of the jutsu, but the pupils that reflected his figure were as real as himself, to the point where he knew the words coming out of the figure’s mouth. </p><p>‘You’ve made a mistake.’ He said, in unison with his mirror self, as the other jumped down from the branch. Shikamaru took a step back in shock. </p><p>This was wrong, he wasn’t supposed to see himself. But the fact that he did mean, it meant—</p><p>It meant that he hadn’t just entered Neji’s soul-realm, <em> he was also in his own.  </em></p><p>Shikamaru continued retreating as the figure moved forward at the same pace, ‘This isn’t right—’ He heard it (and himself) muttering, ‘I shouldn’t be able to see you! I didn't know…’ </p><p>Something splattered above him, hot droplets stinging his face which made him snap his head to look above, and he saw that the characters along the axis pointing upwards had become smudged by something dark and sticky. Shikamaru yelped as he was flung, his body whipping away from his mirror-self as he saw the other hold out his hand and uncurl his fingers, the object within the furl of the other's palm made him want to hurl. </p><p>It was the leaf, Neji’s leaf, on the other him’s palm, leaking dark lines down the contours of his own hands, and Shikamaru’s screams carried from the other realm into his own body.</p><p>Shikamaru collapsed onto his side, dry retching, saliva and sweat dribbling down onto the darkened slate of the ground. His own throat hoarse from phantom screams.  </p><p>In front of him, Neji had doubled over, and the trajectile of blood, which had been splattered across the faded chalk marks, had been the disruption that broke the jutsu.   </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. 1.2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>2.</p><p>Shikamaru turned the motionless body over. Neji’s face was an unnatural shade of grey, and his purpling lips marred by dark blood and the symbol on his forehead has extended, covering his tightly closed eyes and glowing with an eerie ghoulish light. Shikamaru flipped Neji’s wrist over, and leaf had turned into a dark inky patch and painted the veins black along Neji’s arm. Shikamaru didn’t dare touch the corrupted spot and instead held his fingers to Neji’s neck where the erratic beat of Neji’s heart made him shudder as much as the chill from Neji’s skin. He hoisted Neji within his arms, gasping from the strain of Neji’s deadweight, and employed chakra to leap up into the trees.  </p><p> </p><p>The force and manner of his kick that practically exploded the window to the hokage’s office would have put even ten-year-old Naruto to shame. As Shikamaru opened his mouth to call out a multitude of traps that protected the intrusion activated. Shikamaru flipped the table to shield him and the unconscious Neji in his arms as his hands moved by instinct to manipulate the shadows which formed a shield before gathering the poisonous gases and the dozens of kunais and ninja-stars thrown at them into a sphere made of shadows, so dark it looked almost two dimensional, like it was physically sucking in the light. Shikamaru stared at the dark sphere in front of him, unable to belief that it was his own jutsu. </p><p>Having no time to ponder the sudden change of his shadow-release, Shikamaru set Neji down on the floor of the hokage’s office, only to recall with a start that Tsunade was no longer the hokage, and he was probably in the wrong place. </p><p>He picked Neji up and was about to head to the hospital when the door to the office opened. </p><p>Fortunately, Tsunade entered the half-destroyed office. </p><p>Unfortunately for Shikamaru, she was not alone. </p><p>He felt a quake beneath his feet before giant wooden fingers grew around him and grabbed him, the ground opening up before closing in, the building-bricks and concrete of the building closed up around his body, constricting his limbs as he felt wooden tendrils wrap around his whole body, from his ankles, all the way up to his neck, his chakra draining into fatigue as Shikamaru found himself stuck in the floor, with only his head exposed, as the remaining members of the party entered with Tsunade, including the Rokudaime himself and his wood-releasing colleague.</p><p>Tsunade was the first to notice. ‘Hyuuga Neji!’ She exclaimed before dropping to her knees in front of the still-unconscious and barely-breathing figure, flipping him over. Shikamaru noticed that the blackened veins which are now visible along the pale column of Neji’s neck. </p><p>‘Tsunade-sama I—’ the words barely left his mouth before the wooden tendrils that were wrapped around him formed a gag and blocked his words. Shikamaru stared at the two leaders of team seven in disbelief. He had never seen the wood-release being used to hold anyone in this way, not even against Naruto in Kyuubi form. </p><p>Kakashi knelt next to Tsunade. ‘How is he? Godaime-sama?’ </p><p>‘Yin-yang convection,’ The green glow of Tsunade’s forehead jewel discoloured her pale blonde hair. ‘Interrogate your suspect elsewhere, Kakashi, I need this space. And stop calling me Godaime when you’re supposed to be in charge.’ </p><p>Shikamaru paled as he was lifted from the earth-release prison, still bound by Yamato’s wood-release. Yin-yang convection—wasn’t that something his father talked about when he described the creation of— </p><p>The door to the hokage’s office slammed shut as Shikamaru was brought into the briefing room next door. Still bound and gagged, Yamato dropped him not too gently upon the ground. </p><p> </p><p>Shikamaru grunted and struggled to sit up despite being bound from head to toe like a mummy. Kakashi closed the door and slouched against it. ‘I would have expected you to have more caution than to recklessly endanger the life of your fellow shinobi, Nara-kun.’ </p><p>Shikamaru could only unsuccessfully convey his response by blinking and squinting his eyes, stopping his efforts to right himself from where he was careening sideways on the ground when he realised that the effort was futile. </p><p>Kakashi’s face was unreadable as always under his mask, but Yamato seemed completely serious, his brows furrowed in concentration as Shikamaru felt a cold shiver run down his back. They saw him as a threat, a danger that was just as severe as Naruto, that required the necessity to use the kekkei genkai of the first— </p><p>‘Now, if I let you speak, do you promise to behave?’ Kakashi asked in his usual drawl. </p><p>Shikamaru nodded, as the wooden tendrils retracted from his face. </p><p>‘Can I sit up?’ He asked, after spitting out the splinters left behind by the branches. </p><p>‘My, my,’ Kakashi turned, ‘You’re quite unobservant as to the predicament you’re in, Nara-kun.’ He pushed off from the door he was leaning against. ‘Do you even realise the implication of what you had done?’ </p><p>Shikamaru continued lying on his side, straining his neck to keep his head at least somewhat lifted. And waited for the hokage to continue. </p><p>‘I didn’t think that my first reprimand as hokage would be to someone like yourself, Nara-kun, but the forbidden scrolls are locked away for a reason. Honestly, I thought I’d be dealing with some genin brats over this kind of blatantly obvious rule-breaking.’</p><p>Shikamaru continued pursing his lips. ‘Access to soul-realm is not a forbidden jutsu.’ </p><p>Kakashi crouched in front of him. ‘Was that all you did? Accessing the soul-realm? I was under the impression that all the non-forbidden texts ever talked about had been how to access your <em> own </em> soul-realm. And it was not even mentioned in the form of a jutsu. It was in the historic folklore, if I’m not mistaken, and nowhere does it talk of the scripts required to open the gateway, let alone for someone else.’ </p><p>His voice dropped quieter, Shikamaru recognized the interrogation technique from one of Inoichi-jii’s lessons. ‘Do you know what you had done? The ramifications of your actions? Hyuuga Neji not only has a kekkei genkai that relies on yang-release, but also a fuuin. Do you know the consequences of imbuing yin-release into that kind of chakra? Are you even thinking like a reasonable person, or have you been poisoned by your own delusions like certain—’ </p><p>‘It was his wish.’ </p><p>Kakashi stilled. </p><p>‘There are things we do not do, as Shinobi, despite it being—’ </p><p>‘Kakashi-sensei, what would you have done?’ </p><p>Kakashi stopped his looming, and rocked back on his heels. </p><p>‘He asked me for help because he was in pain, Kakashi-sensei. And I chose, I chose not to be passive about it. Aren’t you the one who says that those who abandon their friends are worse than scum? I didn’t want my friend to continue being in pain.’ </p><p>‘So you brought him to death’s door, instead?’ </p><p>‘That was not my intention. I spent all for the last three days reading about the soulmark and this was not—’ </p><p>‘Three days! You do not think that’s a bit rash on your part to have decided that you’ve read all you can in those three days?’  </p><p>Shikamaru shook his head. ‘No.’ </p><p>Kakashi’s head twitched. ‘I never took you for a fool, Nara.’ </p><p>Shikamaru grinded his teeth. ‘It was troublesome, but if I had done nothing, he would’ve went to Ino, or Kurenai, or worse, to someone like Orochimaru or gone to anbu or root.’ </p><p>‘And how is what you did different from what they would have done to him? Shikamaru, by trying to take something that was integral to his being from him, you essentially changed who he is down to the very fibre of his being. It's not something you could possibly deem to have any control over the consequences to and it threatens his very existence, so do you really think you should've gone through with it? Even if Neji-kun had wanted you to do it? I would have taken you to be someone who had even a minute restraint on your impulses.’ </p><p>‘It was not an impulse, Kakashi-sensei.’ </p><p>Kakashi stood up, staring at the door. His posture unreadable, just as his face had been. </p><p>‘He was in pain.’ Shikamaru reiterated. ‘I could see it on him. He—’ He closed his eyes, unable to come up with another explanation, and repeated uselessly. ‘He was in pain.’ </p><p>Kakashi’s shoulders slumped. ‘You know the punishment for accessing forbidden scrolls, and for performing forbidden jutsu, you will answer for your actions. You know this as well as I do, but also, further to that, you will need to answer to them.’ He turned to Yamato and nodded. </p><p>‘Let them in,’ Kakashi instructed. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. 1.3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>3.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru only noticed now that tendrils of branches had been woven through the wooden door to sew it onto the doorframe and the wall. The tendrils unwound, snaking back into the wood of the doorframe, and the door flew off its hinges. Kakashi formed a hand seal, and blocked the trajectile with a puff of smoke. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A figure in a white robe stood emerged as the smoke dissipated. Long black hair and severe tightly closed lips and white eyes with veins extending all the way across his temples to his graying temples. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Hyuuga-san.’ Kakashi subtly moved between the figure and Shikamaru, still bound on the ground. Beside them, Yamato still held the wood release jutsu with perfect stillness but Shikamaru could see that his eyebrows were furrowed and his face more severe than before. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Respectable Rokudaime, are you going to stand between our clan and exacting our rightful vengeance?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kakashi raised his hands, ‘Maa, maa,’ His tone suddenly frivolous as he relaxes his stance, stepping out his left leg and adjusting his posture. ‘It’s a bit too serious, no? The word vengeance. It’s just some kids who were reckless with—’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘We take attempts at bypassing our clan’s seal with the utmost seriousness, hokage-sama, not to mention attempts on the lives of our clan members.’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Not to mention, you say,’ Kakashi drawled, ‘Well, I had been interrogating Shikamaru-kun and it’s been quite clear that neither of those were intended consequences he had anticipated.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘It matters not, Kakashi-sama! Our clan abides by the rules of this respected village with the presumption that you respect the rules of our clan!’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘And what are the rules of such offences?’ Kakashi still sounded casual, his spine bent in that slouching manner that took inches off his height. ‘Righteous killing? Flogging? The Pillory? Do you think this village your clan so respects would exist any time in the near future when these kinds of inter-clan killings become acceptable?’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I would have expected that in order to prevent such a thing the Nara clan should not have overreached in such an instance.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Shikamaru could hardly be representative of his entire—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Kakashi-sensei,’  Shikamaru spoke up, ‘Please, let me up, I won’t do anything, I promise.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kakashi looked back at him, there was no casualness anywhere in what’s exposed of his face, before he sighed, and indicated for Yamato to unbind Shikamaru. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Both of Shikamaru’s legs had fallen asleep and he swayed as he got onto his knees unsteadily, the wood-release having disrupted his chakra channels, on top of draining a significant amount of his chakra. Shikamaru gritted his teeth and unsteadily got on to his feet and walked to Kakashi’s side in order to face the Hyuuga elder. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I do not deny anything you accuse me of, Hyuuga-san. But before you conduct any of your clan’s ritualistic reprimands, just know that Neji came to me for help, and I did so knowing that this was a possible consequence of my actions. You can kill me or beat me or hang me upside down in the Hyuuga compounds, but my guess is you’d rather not do so at the risk of losing your most capable—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘He might as well be lost because of you! Boy!’ The elder censured. ‘Have you been to the asylums? Do you know what the outcome of yin-yang convection might have turned out to be?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru paled, remembering the first mission he ever took with Neji, and how after finding the boy full of holes, how pale his face had been when he caught a glimpse of it between the wall of medics that surrounded him as they tried to salvage the consequences of Shikamaru’s action. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Meanwhile Kakashi stepped between the Hyuuga elder and Shikamaru. ‘In either case, Hyuuga Hayato-san, ritualistic killing and vengeful torture is forbidden across clans. And that takes precedence over any customs of any clan.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Hyuuga elder squared his stance, ‘I do not think you understand, Rokudaime, the seriousness of our reque—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I think you do not understand, Hyuuga-san.’ Kakashi straightened in response, his form suddenly imposing. ‘We have just recovered from a war which was the result of a clan deciding to prioritise its internal hierarchy over the village’s rules. Is the intention of the Hyuuga clan the same? Do you truly believe that the Nara clan had designs to access the power of your clan’s kekkei genkai just because Shikamaru inadvertently activated Neji’s seal?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hyuuga Hayato swallowed, but before he could respond a voice ran out behind him, a woman whose voice made all the blood in Shikamaru’s veins freeze over. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘If you can let me through, Hayato-san.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hayato Hyuuga stepped aside, Shikamaru watched white-faced as his mother, Yoshino, garbed from head to toe in black, including the black veil that covered her graying hair, entered the room. Kakashi stepped to the side as well so together with the Hyuuga elder and Shikamaru the four of them formed almost a perfect four sides of a square. Yamato retreated into the shadows of the room, observing, focusing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yoshino gave her son a look that silenced Shikamaru from questioning her. She looked no thinner than the last time he had seen her, which was shocking considering how little food she had consumed since she decided to shut herself inside her wing of the residence for the last few months. Her skin had turned extremely pale due to the lack of sunlight which made the shadows upon her face pronounced. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hayato Hyuuga bowed to her as Yoshino returned the greeting. ‘On the part of the clan, I would like to formally apologise for the transgressions my son has done upon your clan member. Hyuuga san.’ She said, ‘My son is every part as insolent and compulsive as his father, and his act of stupidity will be punished according to the Nara’s rules.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Hyuuga elder appeared flustered by Yoshino’s words. ‘Madam, I—that I do understand—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I hope the acts of a presumptive child will not sour the good friendship between our great clans. After all, we must not stoop to the level of the tempestuous children. Should the Hyuuga family demand any compensation, remunerative or otherwise, we are happy to cater.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yoshino rattled off like a train and Shikamaru noticed that beneath Kakashi’s mask he’s almost smirking. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘But just as your respected clan has seals to secure the kekkei genkai of the Byakugan, our clan also has measures of ensuring the secrecy of our kekkei genkai. My son has trespassed over many boundaries tonight with his act, we shall see him punished accordingly, but according to our rules.’  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru had forgotten how utterly useless it was like to argue against Yoshino, she had a way of rendering everyone including his father and himself speechless. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kakashi spoke up, ‘As a village leader of course I shall also punish Shikamaru for his misdeeds as a shinobi accordingly. He has performed a ritual which we are still investigating but for his access to the forbidden scrolls alone we will be demoting him and restricting the types of missions he can undertake.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Hyuuga-san, understand the severity that myself and Yoshino-san take to this matter. But we cannot allow clans to see vengeance against each other. If you would like to seek formal retribution against the Nara clan, I urge you as a fellow shinobi and plead with you as the leader of Konohagakure to do so via our village’s administrative system, for the sake of peace.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hyuuga Hayato’s nostrils flared. ‘Of course we as the Hyuuga clan do not wish to be the instigator of any conflict that might destabilise the peace of our village—’ He closed his eyes, ‘It seems like our doubts in the effectiveness of your leadership has been misfounded, Kakashi-sama. However, Neji Hyuuga is a part of our clan, and we shall see to his punishment within our clan.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru startled, ‘Kakashi-sensei, it wasn’t—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The wooden branches that once prevented his speech grew over his lips and shut him up as Shikamaru struggled and gasped, causing the branch to fill the space between his teeth so he couldn’t close his mouth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kakashi thinned his lips. ‘We thank you for your consideration, Hyuuga-san. As you have chosen to respect the decision of the Nara clan, so shall we in respecting the Hyuuga clan’s internal processes.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru felt nauseous, but Kakashi and his mother seemed to not have registered the potential of what Neji might end up going through. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘You can talk to Tsunade-san directly about Neji’s condition. They are in the main office at the moment.’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hyuuga Hayato nodded, and with a purposeful look of contempt directed at Shikamaru, he left the room with a sweep of his sleeves. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kakashi breathed a visible sign of relief as his shoulders sagged. ‘Yoshino-san, thank you for coming so promptly.’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Your dogs are very insistent, Rokudaime.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I’m so sorry for disrupting the peace of your—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yoshino raised her hand. ‘It was my decision, not yours, Kakashi-sama. Now, if you don’t mind lending me the space, I would like a word with my son right here.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kakashi looked at Shikamaru and then at Yoshino. ‘I will need to see over Tsunade-sama and Hayato’s decision about Neji anyway. Do you need Tenzou to be here?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yoshino shook her head, ‘I know how to keep my son in check.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kakashi nodded, and Shikamaru felt the branches that had restricted him for well over half of the evening retreat from his face. He shivered, and looking at his mother, moved to kneel on his knees instead of standing up. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kakashi nodded at Yamato and the two of them left, shutting the door behind them. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yoshino turned to him and Shikamaru realised that her human facade had faded and he was facing a familiar beast.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Foolish boy!’ Shikamaru bristled at the familiar wrath within her voice as she stalked over and hit him over the ears. ‘Do you even stop to think about what you are actually meddling with?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru glared at her, holding the side of his head where she had hit him. ‘I had it under control—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘From the state of that Hyuuga boy you clearly did not! What are you even thinking, Shikamaru? Did you really think you can alter someone’s fate? How big is your ego that you would attempt something like this!’</span>
</p><p>
  <span> ‘That’s not what I was doing!’ Shikamaru planted his left foot in front of him and made to stand up. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Kneel down!’ Yoshino yelled at him, as Shikamaru got back on his knees unwillingly. Yoshino righted an overturned chair and sat down upon it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘You don’t know what you are dealing with, becoming invested in the affairs of those Hyuugas, honestly.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru paled. ‘What are you saying, mother?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yoshino’s wrath faded as fast as it had manifested and she sounded almost vulnerable, as she said: ‘Shikamaru, I hope you realise that you got away on a hair’s breadth of luck. You haven’t received your mark yet, so you can’t possibly know how improper Neji’s wish to remove his own are.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru gasped in disbelief. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yoshino shook her head. ‘You’re too soft, just like your father.' </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘How does this have anything to do with dad?’ Shikamaru glared at Yoshino. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘You don’t have the slightest idea of self-preservation or wisdom to respect the fates. It’s what got him killed, it’s what’s going to get you killed.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru felt his body being consumed by the cold flames of fury: ‘You’re not angry at me for accessing someone’s soul-realm, for me breaking all the rules performing that forbidden technique or injuring Neji, for being demoted for doing so, for almost souring the relationship between our clan and Neji’s—not even for endangering Neji’s life, but you’re angry that </span>
  <em>
    <span>I supported Neji’s decision</span>
  </em>
  <span>?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yoshino’s face was back to nonchalance. ‘I know you were looking out for a friend, my boy. You wouldn’t do something this troublesome if you didn’t care, but Shikamaru, you need to learn that not everyone’s intentions should be considered let alone followed through.’</span>
</p><p>
  <span> Shikamaru felt his hands and feet go numb from the sudden deluge of freezing cold that seized every muscle on his body. He clenched his shaking hands. ‘You’re such a selfish woman.’ Shikamaru whispered harshly, ‘You think I’m acting out because I’m upset that dad died, because it’s the only thing you can see.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yoshino just shook her head, her face contorted by extreme sadness. ‘I can’t keep cleaning up after your mess like I did with your father, Shikamaru, I no longer have the energy to keep doing these things. You need to grow up and be a man.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru wanted to shake her, this shadow to the woman she once had been. And the static in his ear was so loud it made his head pulse with pain—the deafening static in his earpiece that was the last words of his father. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘You didn’t need to come, mother,’ Shikamaru said, ‘if the Hyuugas decided to hang me upside down on a tree in their yard and bleed me like a pig, or if hokage-sama decided to strip me of my rank and exile me or imprison me for life, I could’ve handled it. I anticipated all those results, and I would not have wanted to invoke the Nara clan’s protection. You didn’t need to leave the sanctity of the residence to rescue me, I didn’t want you to do it.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yoshino looked away, the sun was starting to rise and her pale face reflected the weak pre-dawn light. ‘No you couldn’t have—handled it, that is—my child.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru stood up. ‘That’s for me to decide.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I don’t think I can find any punishment more befitting than your ignorance. Shikamaru, go seek that from the hokage-sama. You deserve nothing else from me.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yoshino looked at him as Shikamaru bit his lips, refusing to respond to his mother’s goading words. And as the brilliant sun rose to a perfect day neither of them could find it in their heart to say another word to one another to either agitate or mitigate the pain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finally Yoshino turned, pulled her hood over her head until her veil covered her face and walked out of the building. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru didn’t know if he would ever see her face again. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. 1.4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>4.</p><p>Shikamaru stood up woodenly from where he was kneeling. Yamato had left with Kakashi but Shikamaru still felt the phantom binds of the branches around him. He felt weak, the husk of his form struggling to cling together into a semblance of a being, as if the wood-release had drained him of more than his chakra, or it could have been the exertion from accessing the soul-realm, or the much unwanted interaction with his mother, Shikamaru didn’t know, but by the time he got to his feet, he was panting and covered in a thin sheen of sweat. </p><p>Sunlight leaked from the open doorways of the offices, illuminating the dust particles in the stale nightair that still lingered in the cold corridor, casting panels of blinding paleness onto the curved walls. Shikamaru stared at the wall-scrolls of calligraphy that he had become acquainted with ever since he became a chunin at the age of 13. He had held this job for almost half a decade, and now thanks to his own resolve in helping Neji, he might never walk in this building again. Even worse, he might have to permanently give up his citizenship to Konohagakure. </p><p>The life of a ronin sounds dirty and troublesome, Shikamaru didn’t care for it. </p><p>Kakashi was standing in his office, alone, staring at the remnant markings on the wooden floorboards of the medical jutsu. His mostly obscured face was completely unreadable. </p><p>Shikamaru approached him. </p><p>‘Hokage-sama,’ He said, kneeling down. </p><p>Kakashi sighed. ‘There’s no need for that, Shikamaru-kun.’ </p><p>Shikamaru refused to stand as he shook his head. ‘It was my fault.’ He finally said, ‘I, I still would’ve done it, but I knew what I was doing was wrong. I—I’m ready to accept the consequences of my actions.’ </p><p>Kakashi turned to look at him, still leaning against the doorframe. ‘That’s just the thing, Shikamaru-kun, I have every wish to punish you for your idiocy, but fate might just prevent me from doing so.’ </p><p>Shikamaru looked at Kakashi, confused. </p><p>‘Hinata-chan came. She found a letter Neji had left behind.’ </p><p>Shikamaru gasped. ‘He—’</p><p>‘In the letter, which was only able to be accessed by byakugan, Neji-kun insisted that that he threatened you, on the condition of death, to help him with the ritual.’ </p><p>‘But he did n—’</p><p>‘And, he explained that if activating his seal was trespass upon the Hyuuga clan, then so was his forcing you to use your kekkei genkai offence against the Nara clan. He was willing to accept the full punishment of the Hyuuga clan as well as the Nara provided that the clans do not hold each other in contempt or punish you or anyone else for his own intentions. He insisted the entire matter be resolved by the clans, and that the village not be involved.’ </p><p>Shikamaru paled, ‘Kakashi-sensei, that means—’  </p><p>‘So the Hyuuga elder took him and we could not do a thing. And now if I were to imprison you it would go against Neji’s wishes and the agreed-upon terms of the Hyuugas with your mother. And I cannot afford to destabilise the recent and still-precarious balance we have so soon after the war by imprisoning someone from a major clan without the existence of direct intent to harm the village, which Neji had insisted that you do not have.’ </p><p>‘So you see, Shikamaru-kun, no matter how grief your infringements were, even if Neji had died at your hands, you would not have been subjected to the punishment you so deserved.’</p><p>‘But,’ Shikamaru fell to his hands. ‘But what will happen to him, Kakashi-sensei? Neji-kun, he—’ </p><p>Kakashi made a noise that sounded like a bitter laugh. ‘It’s a bit too late to worry about that now, isn’t it, Shikamaru-kun? Don’t worry, I doubt the Hyuugas will actually kill him. But I have to give it to you. His soulmark is gone.’ </p><p>‘I— I was successful.’ Shikamaru felt his heart stop. ‘But I —’  </p><p>‘And now one more reason why you are protected and untouchable, Nara-Kun: I can’t risk perhaps the only known shinobi to ever access the external soul realm being loyal to another village or becoming a ronin.’</p><p>‘Only known? But I thought that the—’ </p><p>‘You thought that you did what ANBU or ROOT does to remove the mark?’ Kakashi sounded bitter, almost defeated, the weakness in his voice shook Shikamaru to his core. ‘Let me show you.’ </p><p>Kakashi took off one of his fingerless gloves, Shikamaru realised that he had never seen Kakashi without his gloves before—another facet this man had hidden away that was overlooked due to his other enigmas. </p><p>There was a glimmer that made Shikamaru lose his breath, unlike Neji’s soulmark, the fan-shaped ginkgo leaf looked faded, almost like a shadow upon water or within clouds. ‘The ANBU all have a red mark on their bicep, why do you think that is?’ </p><p>Shikamaru felt dizzy, like he had been robbed of his ability to breathe. ‘But oyaji, he—’</p><p>Kakashi laughed, ‘A genius like you seemed to have completely forgotten the obvious answer to why my mark is still visible after the ANBU seal had been lifted and your father’s is not, Shikamaru-kun.’ </p><p>‘The yin-release—’ Shikamaru started. </p><p>Kakashi nodded, ‘Indeed, and it had been the same for Inoichi-san, though neither of them performed any ritual to try to remove someone else’s mark. They merely accomplished in hiding away theirs, as for the ANBU, it had been a secret jutsu that had been passed down through generations that resembled the kekkei genkai limitation seal used by the Hyuuga clan, and the seal, it enabled this self-mutilation by transforming the mark into a disguise. It’s reversible—but not without a cost, which is what you see here, on myself. When the seal is lifted, the soulmark lightens, as if in denying fate, the sense of self lessens.’</p><p>Shikamaru stood there, airless and speechless, his entire body frozen up as comprehension dawned. </p><p>‘And ROOT?’ He forced himself to swallow the impending apprehension, and asked. </p><p>‘Much, much more direct, and inhuman.’ Kakashi smiled, ‘Each of Danzo-san’s bandages cover a piece of flesh he had cut out of his body where the soulmark had appeared, manifesting somewhere else on the skin after the previous marked patch had been cut off.’ Kakashi slipped his gloves back onto his hand. ‘I must say there are some things I will never miss about the old Konohagakure, and ROOT is one of them.’ </p><p>Shikamaru felt light-headed from nausea. ‘I—’ </p><p>‘So you see, Shikamaru-kun, whatever you did, it was more absolute and effective than the rest of these so-called secretive operations. You’ve become more powerful than them, you’ve become more powerful than your father, Shikamaru.’ </p><p>Shikamaru shook his head in denial, ‘I don’t—’</p><p>‘An on that note, Nara Shikamaru, I would like for you to undertake a formal internship for the position of chief secretary to the Hokage, the position that your father held for the fourth Hokage.’ </p><p>Shikamaru couldn’t find his voice to accept or deny. </p><p>‘—This is not why I did those things.’ He finally said.</p><p>Kakashi shrugged, ‘Sometimes intention and outcome have nothing to do with one another. What do you say? Shikamaru?’ </p><p>‘I understand this is your strategy to ensure my loyalty to the village, but I—’ Shikamaru thinned his lips. ‘I would not think to betray the village, hokage-sama.’ </p><p>‘You performed an S-ranked forbidden jutsu. Your yin-release manipulation is at a level perhaps more powerful than some of the most notorious foes we’ve ever fought. Oorochimaro can reanimate the dead, Kaguya-hime can take over the spiritual essence of her descendents, but none of them had ever managed to manipulate the shadows of the living. None has crossed into the realm you had been capable of. Where are those traps that you’ve neutralised with your shadow-release earlier when you broke into the office?’ </p><p>Shikamaru frowned, at first not understanding Kakashi’s words, then, with a startled realisation, he looked down at his hand and flexed his fingers. The dark sphere blinked into existence as naturally as shadows cast by a lightsource, within, the contained gases and weapons glinted, still quivering with the remaining kinetic energy. </p><p>Shikamaru could feel each individual object and force within the ball of shadows. For the first time in his life, the unbecoming his father had told him about made sense to him—as obvious and basic as concepts such as gravity or chakra. </p><p>He rotated his wrist, and the suspended matter and forces disintegrated, simply turned into nothing, as the shadow sphere blinked out of existence, like someone had blown out a candle. </p><p>‘Impressive,’ Kakashi’s voice contradicted the sentiment he was expressing, ‘You see, Shikamaru, whether you possess the intent or not, you can now delete any object or person from this reality, you can literally blink people out of existence snuff out their lives in their sleep without anyone else being able to detect it. This position is not just to ensure your loyalty to the village, it’s also to consolidate the power of Konohagakure: not only do we have the hero who saved the realm from the wrath of the Fourth Shinobi War, we also have the only person who is of any threat to him being his most loyal right-hand-man, by the time Naruto becomes hokage, there will be nothing that can threaten him, or even wish to try.’ </p><p>The sun filtered through Kakashi’s pale hair, turning it almost semi-transparent. </p><p>‘You’ve played enough shogi to see the moves I’m making, Shikamaru-kun. I need to know if you are onboard with my desires to continue the dynasty of my sensei.’ </p><p>Shikamaru straightened onto one knee and lowered his head. ‘My life and service are to the village, hokage-sama.’ </p><p>Kakashi nodded, ‘Good, now go and return the scrolls you took from the archives. You are not to take any A-ranked or higher missions until further notice, and your pay is suspended for the rest of the year.’ </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>END OF PART 1</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>(yes I know what's truly under the bandages of Danzo but I prefer not to think about it due to trypophobia &gt;.&lt;)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. 2.1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span class="big">PART 2</span>
</p><p>
  <span>1.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Two weeks later, Neji appeared in the briefing room at the hokage’s office: thinner, paler and a little worse for wear, but otherwise carried the same air of stoicism as always. Shikamaru made no attempt to question him as the two of them accepted the diplomatic mission to Suna.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The mission had clearly been given to Neji on purpose, as usually Choji or Ino would be assigned to accompany him, whereas Neji, being combat-oriented and usually assigned with his fellow Team Gai members, seemed an ill fit for a trip to Suna which needed almost no security. Shikamaru was not good at guessing Kakashi’s intent, but to him it was evident that the hokage wanted him out of the village and away from the Hyuuga clan, but due to the lack of concrete evidence Shikamaru decided to keep these thoughts to himself, and instead resigned to being burdened with a stern-faced genius taijutsu fighter whom he almost killed and to him he also kind of owes his life and current promotion/demotion (Shikamaru still can’t decide if the internship was one or the other) on a mission essentially to deliver some documents. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neither brought up the topic of that night at the forest for the entire duration of their journey there. Shikamaru wasn’t going to admit, even to himself, that the urge to ask what Neji had had to endure in the Hyuuga compound as well as curiosity of his now shadow-free wrist was almost enough to overcome the shame and regret he had felt in having Neji shoulder the blame on his actions, but was not enough to overcome his apprehensions. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji, for his part, was a perfect travel companion. Silent yet almost constantly alert, stoic and didn’t require Shikamaru to spare energy for small talk or distractions. And despite the less-than-recovered state, he even managed to keep Shikamaru on his toes during those few shogi matches they found themselves playing during the journey. Shikamaru wasn’t able to close out any of those games in thirty moves. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The games helped, through the to and fro of the familiar rhythms of board-restricted attack and counter-attack Shikamaru learned to look at Neji again, even if it was just to study the now unmarked wrist as Neji hovered his hand, contemplating the possible outcomes of the move he intended to make.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The sand city emerged into view four days later when the treelines had receded from the horizon completely. Sand collected in Shikamaru’s hair as the desert wind greeted them along with the cresting skyline of domed roofs of sandstone buildings.    </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji looked pristine while Shikamaru rubbed sand out of the grooves of the shell of his ear, underneath his fingernails, and the many crevices that the irritating particles managed to lodge. He wondered if byakugan has a secret ability to repel dirt as they entered the arched gates of the beige city. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Try as he might, he was never going to enjoy staying at Temari’s homeland. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The kazekage greeted them with the usual accompanying party and made no remarks that Shikamaru came with a different team. Temari gave Shikamaru a look that had him bristling in his skin. Abruptly and uneasily aware of the fact that Neji would be privy to what was going on between him and the sister of the kazekage. However, recalling Neji’s resolve to rid himself of the mark put Shikamaru at ease, as if Neji’s objective rejection of fate protected Shikamaru against his judgement or prejudices. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>After the formal dinner Shikamaru went drinking with Temari per their usual routine. Their intimacy was contingent on peace and diplomacy that she and Shikamaru assisted in maintaining through these missions. He contemplated this as he kissed her outside her residence, the two of them ambassadors symbolic of the union between the two villages in their physical act of congregation, making the whole thing a lot more solemn and ceremonial as far as sex went. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Temari stopped his wonderings when she tugged on his vest and dragged him inside her apartment. As they settled down on the couch she pushed at him slightly when he leaned over for her neck.       </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I found him.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru sobered up as if an ice bucket had been dumped on his head. He sat back and stared at her, unblinking. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She lifted her sleeve to show him the jagged lines across her pulse point. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Someone from the thunder country, turns out these are traces of lightning.’  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru raised his hand, and after a few seconds of hesitation touched her wrist lightly, beneath the mark her pulse coursed steadily through her veins.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘We met when our villages collaborated to take out a trafficking ring.’ she continued, as he remained silent. ‘He’s a chunin, but on his way to becoming a jounin, a medic.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru took his hand back and shoved it between his legs, and studied her beautifully striking face, her heart shaped mouth which Shikamaru knew the taste of in the most intimate way, and forced out a twitch to the corner of his mouth that was the barest effort of a smile. ‘Then congratulations are in order.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As soon as the words left his mouth a gust of wind crashed into him, solid as a boulder. He flew backwards from the force, right off the couch, and slammed into the wall behind it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Temari, fan in hand, seething as she glared at him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘That’s it? Huh? Nara Shikamaru? No ounce of objection from your part? Not even one single impulse to try to keep me?’ Temari yelled, ‘Are you pleased that it wasn’t you? Are you happy now that you no longer feel obligated to maintain our relationship for the sake of our countries?!’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘No!’ Shikamaru, having slid down from the dent his body had made from the impact, struggled to get up. ‘I just thought that you wanted—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘You don’t know anything about what I want!’ Temari snapped, ‘I—I thought… I thought you would at least feel a little sad, tell me you might still have a chance, for me to wait till you’re eighteen so you get your own soulmark. </span>
  <em>
    <span>‘It could be branches.’</span>
  </em>
  <span> That’s what I thought you’d say.’   </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I’m not happy. I just thought you wouldn’t want me to be troublesome—’ Shikamaru shut his mouth, Neji’s face floated up to the front of his brain for some reason, the thinned lips displaying that determined rejection of fate. ‘I didn’t think that you’d want me to—get in your way.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Temari paled, biting her lips as she turned around, picked up some things that had been knocked to the ground due to the attack. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘You’re full of bullshit, Nara Shikamaru.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She righted the couch with one hand, before dragging Shikamaru by the arm and tossing him out of the front door. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Never come find me again.’ She said, slamming the door in his face. ‘Get out of my village.’ </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Which was how Shikamaru found himself leaving much earlier than anticipated, taking a slightly confused but non-objecting Neji out of the inn and choosing to camp outside the Suna gates, the desert rattling their tent as Shikamaru tended to abrasions and bruises caused by the impact. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji looked at him almost bemused, as Shikamaru muttered ‘troublesome woman’ under his breath. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘You were pretty idiotic though.’ Neji pointed out, ‘Can’t blame her.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru winced as he applied more ointment to his side, flinching when he touched a particularly tender spot on his ribcage. ‘Stupid fan-bitch might have cracked my ribs. And it’s not my fault, she totally overreacted.’  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji activated his byakugan. ‘Are you hurt? Let me have a look.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru crossed his hands over his torso protectively, ‘How is your gentle-fist going to help me other than finishing the job Temari started?’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji rolled his eyes, ‘Stop being a baby and let me have a look.’  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tentatively Shikamaru lowered his arms as Neji’s palm, warm with chakra, grazed across his bare chest, then firm fingers promptly poked him where it stung.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru yelped, pushing Neji off and doubling over. ‘I knew it! You </span>
  <em>
    <span>are </span>
  </em>
  <span>trying to kill me.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘It’s just bruised.’ Neji sat back, folding his hands within his sleeves as the veins retracted from his temples. ‘The true injury is to your pride and nothing else.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘You are the worst person to comfort others when they get dumped.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji shook his head, ‘You don’t sound like someone who got dumped. Were you even in love with her?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru opened his mouth to say </span>
  <em>
    <span>‘of course’ </span>
  </em>
  <span>but couldn’t after a pause. Temari’s news of finding her bondmate had been abrupt, but did it make Shikamaru feel those things he heard his parents talk about? Like anger, or sadness, or even indignation? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was beginning to realise that during their time together, he had never once considered that their soulmarks were going to align as a possibility. When she got hers, he had thought it an inevitability that their somber and ceremonial sexual intimacy had been stamped with an expiry date. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji, as if sensing his thoughts, scoffed, ‘You have a terrible personality, genius strategist.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru glared, ‘Oh, this coming from you, who—’ He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.   </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji shrugged, and to Shikamaru’s surprise gave him a smile that softened the features on his face, ‘I don’t need a tattoo to tell me how I feel about someone.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru stilled, looked at the still vacant space on his own wrist which would soon be occupied by the presence of another. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I might need a bit of help.’ He said, afraid to look up and face Neji’s smile caressed by the lamplight in the tent. </span>
</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. 2.2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>2.</p><p>Days passed, and the slow but unavoidable onset of loss caught Shikamaru off-guard. The absence within him healed much slower than his physical injury. His sadness, he realised, was not due to the loss of intimacy—he had liked Temari’s company, her observant eyes and passionate opinions that almost bordered zealousness. Sure, the sex he was going to miss, but the loss of her friendship hit him harder than return to singledom. </p><p>Neji, the arrogant prick, had been right. He had not understood his feelings for her enough to deserve that kind of profound and permanent attachment the weight of a soulmark bore. </p><p>The winter chill settled over Konoha with a northerly breeze that stripped all the trees of their leaves. Shikamaru occupied his time holed up at the hokage’s office adjusting to his new promotion-demotion as the secretary-in-training, trying with decreasing rate of success to read the moods from Kakashi’s mask, and spent his off-days indoors reading or napping, despite Ino’s persistence that they go out. At first it had been easy using his general discontent about his new chunin status, being broke since his pay had been suspended, and breakup with Temari as excuses, but after two months it no longer satisfied Ino, which was how he found himself sitting at a party one evening, as the Konoha eleven (the sans-Sasuke and including-Sai version) gathered to celebrate Sai’s birthday. </p><p>‘Show us your mark!’ Tenten nudged Sai on the arm, ‘Is it a leaf?’ </p><p>Sai, his usual polite half-smile upon his face, rolled up his left sleeve to display a single flower against his marble skin. The ones who weren’t eighteen yet leaned closer in fascination, as Tenten sighed, disappointed. </p><p>‘Well, at least we won’t lose you to an outsider, right? Ino?’ </p><p>Ino, her whole body radiating unease with her shoulders hunched and her chin tucked into her chest, merely made a non-committed sound of agreement as Sai rolled his sleeve back down.</p><p>‘I’m glad that ROOT no longer exists so I was able to keep it instead of having it removed by obligation.’ </p><p>The room fell silent as everyone was pointedly avoiding looking in Neji’s direction, even loud ones like Naruto and Kiba looked uncomfortable. Shikamaru noticed Neji’s rigid shoulders and cleared his throat. </p><p>‘Sai, do you realise what your mark might indicate who your soulmate will be?’ </p><p>Sai turned. ‘What do you mean?’ </p><p>Shikamaru smirked, ‘Leaf is the common form of soulmark in Konohagakure, but some families have other parts of plants specific to their bloodlines—fruits, seeds, or flowers.’ </p><p>‘Which ones are they?’ Sai asked as Ino elbowed Shikamaru on the side, hard.</p><p>‘Here,’ She picked up half a dozen pieces of barbeque meat from Choji’s plate and shoved them into Shikamaru’s mouth, ‘see if this won’t shut you up.’ </p><p>Choji, realising meat had been stolen from his plate, reached over to stop Ino and accidentally knocked Naruto into Kiba, who spilled his tea and jumped up when the water burned him through his clothing, rattling the entire table as a few flasks of sake and teacups went toppling. The whole group descended into chaos. Shikamaru noticed Neji’s gaze from across the table, and those pale eyes, opaque as always, seemed to display the slightest squint of gratitude. </p><p>
  
</p><p>Two days later Lee woke up with a soulmark that had him breaking down the door to the Yamanaka florist. </p><p>‘I got a flower as well!’ Lee screamed, ‘You don’t think this means I’m Sai’s bondmate, do you?’ </p><p>Ino, despite being the kyodai, smacked Lee on the head. ‘They have to be identical, you idiot! Sai’s is akizakura, and yours—it’s not even a flower! This is a clover, a four-leafed one—’ Ino’s eyes widened in comprehension. ‘Oh my god, no way!’ </p><p>Lee, having relaxed after hearing the good news that he wasn’t not going to be Sai’s mate, tensed up again after Ino’s exclamation. ‘Why, do you know someone who has that mark?’ He asked, eagerly. </p><p>A grin spread over Ino’s face. ‘Only someone special to you~’ Ino winked, snickering.  </p><p>Lee looked confused, and Shikamaru happened to walk in through the broken front-door at the exact moment to hear Lee say: ‘My soulmate is Neji, isn’t it? It can’t be Tenten, I know mine looks different, and Neji got his removed because he knew.’</p><p>Ino doubled over, consumed by giggles as Lee implored for her to explain, which only made her laugh harder. Shikamaru’s mind conveniently supplied a mental image of Lee and Neji and found his smile being robbed by a dark thing, a ball of thorns scraping low in his stomach. Almost an indignation at the thought of Neji being burdened by this kind of attachment despite the ordeals they went through to rid him of it, his attachment to the matter startled himself. </p><p>‘Neji had a normal looking leaf, Lee.’ Shikamaru said, as Lee shoved the soulmark in Shikamaru’s face. ‘I think Ino meant someone else, maybe you should check with your sensei.’ </p><p>Lee widened his eyes, a strange light made  them look almost sentient in their eagerness to pop out of his head. He ran off, trampling the destroyed pieces of wood that was once the front-door in a whirlwind of green. </p><p>Ino wiped the corner of her eyes. ‘Oh my god, Neji and Lee, that’s the funniest—’ Abruptly she turned Shikamaru. ‘You knew.’ </p><p>Shikamaru picked up an overturned pot of cactus and righted it. ‘Knew what.’ </p><p>‘Neji’s soulmark. You knew what it looked like.’</p><p>Shikamaru winced when the cactus pricked his finger. ‘He showed me after a shogi match.’ He avoided looking into Ino’s eyes. </p><p>‘What did it look like?’ Ino asked as she handed Shikamaru a pair of gardening gloves, uninterested in picking up the mess around her shop as her attention became consumed by the awareness of Shikamaru’s knowledge. </p><p>Shikamaru, after sucking out the prick, righted the potted plant. ‘Like a normal leaf!’ </p><p>Ino hit Shikamaru on the shoulder, ‘Come on, tell me, I can probably pinpoint the genus.’ </p><p>Shikamaru gathered up the dirt on the ground in a heap and piled them into the cactus pot. ‘I’m not an expert in plants, Ino. It looked like the most common kind of leaf, the kind you’d find in any forest,’ At that Ino rolled her eyes and Shikamaru continued before she could interject, ‘in any case it’s gone now, so what’s the point of me describing what it looks like to you?’ He said, as he placed the pot back on the shelving</p><p>Ino folded her arms across her chest. ‘You sure seemed knowledgeable at dinner the other night. I can’t believe you actually said that in front of Sai, you asshole!’ She chided, with a slight blush across his face. </p><p>Shikamaru shrugged, ‘What, it’s not like you’ve ever been subtle about it. I guess you lucked out huh, it’s likely that—’ </p><p>Ino grabbed Shikamaru by his ponytail and shoved him into a headlock. ‘Shut your mouth! Bakamaru!’ She squeezed and only let go when Shikamaru tapped out.   </p><p>Shikamaru rubbed his neck. ‘You’re going to make a terrible wife with your violence.’</p><p>Ino gave him a glare. ‘Instead of talking about this stuff with an idiot like you, I’m going to find Sakura and Tenten. Mind my shop!’ She said as her hair swished on her way out.   </p><p>‘Wait why am I tasked with something this troublesome? You didn’t even clean—’  </p><p>But Ino was already out the still-destroyed door. </p><p>Shikamaru looked around the flower shop in exasperation, the pieces of wood now with multiple sets of footprints on the ground, and went to grab the broom. </p><p>‘Shikamaru,’ Ino peered back inside the shop, making Shikamaru freeze up. ‘You didn’t have anything to do with his mark removal, did you?’ </p><p>At that moment her level voice reminded Shikamaru so much of Inoichi-jiisan that he almost dropped the broom he had been holding. </p><p>Shikamaru pursed his lips. ‘I thought you were going to gossip to your friends.’ </p><p>‘You know it’s bad karma, right? Not to mention forbidden, and dangerous.’ Ino craned her neck to hold his gaze as her fingers curled around the deformed door-frame. ‘Might end up being something you do that you regret.’ </p><p>The airless darkness suffocated Shikamaru for one moment, who remembered the ache in the pit of his stomach when Lee voiced his baseless guess. </p><p>‘I didn’t have anything to do with it, Ino. I just happened to remember it.’ He took a breath and faced Ino. ‘Now go, leave this mess with me.’</p><p>Ino studied him for a few more seconds, before she turned and left without saying goodbye. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. 2.3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>3.</p><p>
  <span>The thought worried him. More accurately, the fact that the thought worried him troubled him more than the actual thought. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>On more than one occasion he questioned himself why he actually bothered to care, and pinned it to the unpredictability of the consequences of finding out someone else might end up with Neji’s soulmark. Of course, few actually had knowledge of what the mark looked like and Neji wasn’t likely going to divulge the details if the other bearing the identical mark ever did in fact cross his path. Still, it didn’t detract from the fact that fate was a troublesome and incomprehensible yet unignorable factor. Shikamaru determined that his preoccupations were founded upon the generic concern he had for a fellow shinobi and possibly the sanity of the entire village, that must be the reason why the topic of Neji’s bondmate remained consistently on his mind. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It didn’t help that this year was the year the rest of them turned 18—his friends, who seemed to be going through the same anxiety-driven anticipation of this rite at the same time; experiencing this together, like how they have experienced so much together through their adolescence—almost like this was somehow also something they need to conquer as a team, as comrades. The subject was constantly at the forefront of their conversations and consequently Shikamaru’s thoughts. It also didn’t help that Ino, having become a semi-guru of sorts to this whole thing thanks to her knowledge in botany and her obsession with divination, was spending her waking moments, speculating and postulating and driving Shikamaru insane.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Since Sakura and Tenten were constantly hanging around Ino, Shikamaru began avoiding all women, single or otherwise altogether. And one day, after an insightful talk with Sai who mentioned the reality that was Gai-sensei and Lee, who had taken their bond to mean even more vigorous display of youth and passion and even more obnoxious training on Lee’s part, Shikamaru began to avoid men as well. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The isolation only made Shikamaru realise that he was trapped by his own preoccupation,  that each time his thoughts gravitated towards the eventuality of getting his own mark they’d lead him to a dark place he could not crawl his way out of. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Before the war, his mother had been caught up in all the commotion and unsubtly speculated on Shikamaru’s potential matches. She saw Shikamaru and Ino as a kind of inevitability, having never approved of that ‘Suna-woman’ as she called Temari, which was not only disturbing in that not only did Shikamaru essentially see Ino as his sister, but also that Yoshino actually believed Shikamaru to be compatible with a flippant airhead. At one point or the other Yoshino had considered all the other female shinobis: Sakura, Tenten, even Hinata who had her eyes set on Naruto ever since they were children, even Hinata’s sister Hanabi, who to Shikamaru had never been more than a kid. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His father had always been the buffer between the two of them, telling his mother that there was enough time for them to tell Shikamaru later, when he’s older, after he actually gets his mark.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru hated how utterly wrong his dad had been. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And now, in her perpetual unignorable silence, his mother had once again managed to get under his skin and make her opinion known to him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The troubling thoughts began to manifest in nightmares. One morning Shikamaru woke up from a visceral sensation impaling his arm with a dagger, blood spurting from the wound as he stabbed and stabbed at the shapeless mark on his skin, until it oozed shadowy blood black as ink. And, covered in a cold sheen of sweat, he fervently wished for Asuma’s presence, recalled the maple-shaped mark he had on his arm that matched Kurenai’s own. A mark which they carved beside his name on the plaque in the cemetery. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So he took a bouquet of lilies and a packet of cigarettes and made his way to the cemetery.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once there, he met an unexpected presence. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji stood over the grave of Nara Shikaku, deep in thought. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wasn’t sure if he should approach, so he lit a cigarette instead, letting it burn between his fingers in the bristling cold. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji spoke: ‘I’m intruding.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru shook his head. ‘Didn’t want to interrupt.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji touched the memorial plaque. ‘I’m here to apologise.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Somehow the idea made Shikamaru smile. ‘He wouldn’t have accepted it, he hates unnecessary courtesy.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji turned, reciprocating his smile, Shikamaru felt nailed upon the ground as the first sprinklings of snow gently touched Neji’s onyx hair.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I had dreams, before the war. I dreamt that I would be lying here, a part of this burial ground, my family and friends crying over my grave. I had no faith that the Uchihas and rinnegan would be able to be defeated, after what Pain was capable of, how could it have been possible?’  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru stepped forward, and stood by his side. Neji’s profile was hidden behind his thick veil of hair and his voice echoed as snow fell heavy and silent around them.   </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I thought it was over.’ He flattened a palm against his white robes, over his stomach, ‘I thought, in those moments when I was bleeding, that I saw the other side: my father waiting for me, by his side a strange woman with a familiar face who must have been my mother. I was at peace.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru wanted to brush off the snowflakes from Neji’s hair. There was no wind accompanying the heavy snowfall, and Neji was so still he looked like a statue. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘So walking here feels like returning rather than a visit.’ Neji made a small noise like a snort. ‘Please don’t take this to mean that I’m going to commit a suicide or anything like that.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru smirked. ‘Of course not, you’re just an irritating person who is troublesome to the core.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji turned, hair rippling as he glanced at Shikamaru with pale eyes. ‘You’re not wrong.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He filed his hair behind his ears on one side and took one more look at the plaque. ‘Shogi? I’ve been practicing and want to see if I have a shot.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru nodded, feeling the ground slide out beneath him like snow was melting under Neji’s smile.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. 2.4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>4.</p><p>
  <span>How was it possible to be worried about something that must eventually come to pass? Shikamaru hated troublesome mental exercises of speculation and abstracts yet his newfound closeness with Neji had him on edge, which, given the ease of their occasional shogi matches where at the end of the match they would pass the rest of the afternoon in conversation-less peace, was a stark contrast to the anxiety it sprung when Shikamaru pondered about it afterwards. It didn’t help that as one by one each of his friends woke up on the morning of their fateful day to discover their marks stipulated the impending eventuality that his own fateful day was drawing nearer and nearer, yet he was no closer to coming to any remotely satisfactory conclusion. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So far no one except for Lee had found their bondmate. The supposed soulbond between Lee and Gai-sensei amazed Shikamaru in that it looked nothing like anything he’d ever seen or read about on the subject. Lee was ardently devoted to Gai-sensei, but there was not an ounce of exclusivity or possessiveness that tended to illustrate anything beyond the closeness of a sensei/student nature. In a very real way, they were already soulmates before the mark appeared, but on a level deeper than physical or even emotional intimacy. It made Shikamaru ponder the true nature of the mark, which made him reconsider and recalibrate and reevaluate and re-engage in the aforementioned mental exercises that exhausted him and forced him to take a nap in order to stop thinking. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Time flowed on both entirely mundanely and consistently busily as a secretary-in-training. Peace meant less and less S-ranked combat missions that required strategists—like himself, and more and more diplomatic missions that required negotiators—like himself: trade that needed new regulations thanks to the now non-bordered landmasses, loose ends of conflicts that arose due to the war which required oversight, war-ravaged infrastructures and communities that required reconstruction. Shikamaru took  foreign affairs and legal administration studies under Shizune—excessively trite and predictable systems that were archaic, but also necessary. The repetitive but voluminous laws and regulations and treaties and policies occupied his mind presently, but not enough to distract from the ever-troubling topic.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spring came and went with Choji’s departure. After discovering an unmistakable lightning bolt (not the same as Temari’s, thank god) on his wrist he had promptly set off to the Kumogakure to find his mate after a hasty goodbye with Shikamaru and Ino one morning at the village gates, not even bothering to stay for one last farewell barbeque. Shikamaru had been floored by his friend’s conviction. But Ino had rolled her eyes when he mentioned this and only told him to help her with the flower shop for that day. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That evening Shikamaru expected to see his mother emerge at least to speak with Choji’s family but once again only found silence. He spent that evening staring at the acorn hanging above the portrait of his father at the altar, and suddenly felt a bout of longing for Temari, who, like Choji, also had a bondmate in the Land of Thunder. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was not as insusceptible to loneliness as he had previously thought.   </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>As if the universe were playing some kind of joke on him, he entered the hokage’s office the next morning to find Temari standing there, hair just as spiky and fan even bigger than Shikamaru had remembered. The memory of crashing into a wall surfaced in Shikamaru’s mind, but instead of the recollection of pain it was the phantom warmth of a chakra-charged palm grazing across his ribs that raised the hair on the back of his neck. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Temari gave him an unmistakable smirk, and carried on debriefing the mission like Shikamaru didn’t exist. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>After the hokage dismissed them, she caught up to Shikamaru. ‘Let’s find a place to talk, any good izakaya around here?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru wanted to point out that Temari knew all of the izakayas in Konohagakure from her frequent previous visits, but then recognised that this was her way of extending civility. So he nodded and led the way to a bar not far from Ichiraku ramen. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ater a whole flask of sake, Temari nudged Shikamaru gently, ‘You can relax, shadow-boy, I’m not going to jump you.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru shook his head, ‘I’m more afraid of you fanning me into another wall .’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Temari laughed into her sake, ‘You deserved it you heartless brat,’ but her tone was light enough to put Shikamaru at ease. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘How’s the new beau?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Temari looked at him, amused, ‘How is it possible that the shinobi world considers such a tactless man as their best strategist? You don’t know how to ask in a roundabout way?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru, smirking, replied, ‘I know Temari-san prefers directness and honesty.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Temari sipped from her cup, ‘Observant brat.’ She muttered. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>So? </span>
  </em>
  <span>Shikamaru wanted to prompt her, but instead refilled her empty cup as she eventually continued: ‘I was lying Shikamaru, there’s no boyfriend, and I don’t know if my mark is a bolt of lightning. Do you know what it’s like to date you? You’re so passive and non-responsive and we only ever see each other during missions. Even Gaara was clued-in enough to give me these dull trips here so I have an excuse to see you. I just wanted to see you riled up, but—’ She downed the contents of her cup. “I was stupid then, it’s not on you.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru adjusted in his seat. ‘I—I’ve been irresponsible with your feelings, Temari-san.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Temari covered her face, ‘Will you stop calling me </span>
  <em>
    <span>‘san’</span>
  </em>
  <span> like we are some kind of colleagues?’ She said, her voice hoarse, ‘Don’t I at least deserve that?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru rubbed the blank spot on his forearm, ‘I—’ He wanted to apologise but recalled what Temari said about tact, and held his tongue. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As abruptly as Temari’s tears started she recovered almost equally quickly. ‘Look, I’m not looking for reconciliation, but we parted on a bad note, and it doesn’t make me feel good about myself. Truthfully, I was taking advantage of the fact that you never said no.’ She looked at Shikamaru, lifted her sleeve and flashed her mark. ‘In four months, if this comes up on your wrist, I want you to be sure before you even think of coming to find me, got it?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru took her hand and kissed her knuckles, chaste and brief, ‘I know it won’t be me Temari... nee-san, because you deserve better.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Temari’s eyes brimmed over again, but she nodded and said no more. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They walked back to the inn where she was lodging and kissed—like lovers, on the mouth—with no passion, as a form of finality. When Shikamaru started heading back after she’d gone into the inn, he spotted Neji standing some steps behind him, and a weird twisted feeling manifested in his gut, almost like the weight of guilt. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘So,’ Neji said, ‘Not going on your diplomatic duties tonight?’ There was an icy edge to his easy tone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The jibe hurt more than it should and Shikamaru found himself reacting instead of thinking. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I’m not expecting you to understand what you have rejected, Hyuuga-san.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The ease fell off Neji’s face, whose eyes widened at the blatant hostility. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru slouched, ‘Is there something you require of me this evening?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji’s face faltered for a split second, then his lips thinned and his eyebrows furrowed, a glimpse of the arrogant pre-chuunin-exam genius of their childhood days. ‘Forgive me for expecting that you might need me to check for broken ribs and injured pride again.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru felt anger pour into his twisted guts like oil into a furnace. ‘I thank you for your concern. Though it seems here the only injured pride this evening appears to be your own. I’ll be sure to advise you of the remedy after I find out how to remove that piece of stick lodged up your ass.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji grimaced, his lips parting to flash a glimpse of teeth and Shikamaru unconsciously began taking note of light-sources around him, his body tensing as Neji spun on his heels and stalked away. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The spring breeze cut razor sharp against his cheek, Shikamaru braced his stance until the night swallowed Neji’s silhouette entirely. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Neji made no pretense at avoiding Shikamaru, no longer showing up to the gatherings, not once accepting missions at the hokage office in Shikamaru’s presence, and nowhere to be seen around in the village or the surrounding areas. He was even absent for Kiba’s birthday, which upset the dog-boy immensely. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He never frequented any of the training grounds, did not shop or eat at the commercial strip, and the light to his assigned residence in the Shinobi quarters didn’t turn on at night. Shikamaru abandoned the idea of finding Neji and apologising after two weeks of reconnaissance. He had felt guilty for long enough, Shikamaru decided, time to move on. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Unfortunately, not only was that not how his mind worked, but the eventuality of confronting the matter became apparent when Rokudaime summoned both of them as well as Naruto for a new mission. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru protested, complained and eventually begged the hokage to assign a different team and was instead met with rejection.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘We need Neji’s dojutsu to unlock these temples as forceful entry would destroy the artifacts and Hinata is on another mission for another week.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Kakashi-sensei—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Are you asking if I, the hokage, could accompany you on a mission? When in fact I no longer have the sharingan?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Hanabi-chan—’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Is a genin which means she’s way too young and inexperienced to take on the mission.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Hiashi-san—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Is no longer part of the active shinobi-force and also needs to attend to clan matters.’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Any of the other Hyuuga—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Are either too old or too young.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Sasuke—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Naruto burst out laughing, ‘You want to switch one wet blanket with another? Come on Shikamaru just take Neji, it takes weeks for the pigeons to track down Sasuke.’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru looked at Neji, who was standing rod straight and staring directly ahead, and relented. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Roger,’ He bowed, accepting the scroll. ‘We leave at 0700 in the morning.’ He instructed Neji and Naruto, one looking crestfaller at having to wake at such an hour and the other looking troubled, deep frown between his pale eyes, but managed a curt nod, leaving Shikamaru even more worried about the upcoming mission. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That night he lit an incense in front of his father’s shrine and played a game of shogi by himself in the candlelight. The shadows danced around him as night gusts blew at the flickering flames until Shikamaru became irritated and restrained the shadows in a bind. The winds moved the clouds apart to uncover pale moonlight which cast frosty net of light on the ground corresponding to the gaps within the foliage. Shikamaru tested the limits of his shadow manipulation, managing to restrain all movements of shadow and light cast by each leaf and blade of grass in the courtyard well into the evening, until he collapsed due to exhaustion of chakra. </span>
</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. 2.5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>5.</p><p>The next morning, extremely late and sporting dark circles under his eyes, Shikamaru dragged his feet to the village gates, hating himself for setting the time so early. </p><p>Naruto was impatient and complained loudly that he was as bad as his lazy sensei and how hard it had been waiting for him in the sun. Neji, as usual, was quiet and looked unaffected by the rising temperature.</p><p>They made up for lost time by rushing through the heat. Shikamaru, still exhausted from last night, almost tripped when he stumbled across a branch as they sped across the canopy. </p><p>He was unceremoniously scooped up by Naruto. ‘What’s with you today?’ Naruto asked, refusing to put him down, ‘Do you need me to charge your chakra?’ </p><p>Shikamaru struggled. ‘Let me go, you doofus, I just had a bad night of sleeping. And when are you going to learn how to be more discreet with your kyuubi-form? You can’t run around like a little lightbulb, we’re shinobi—ninjas—stealth is in our name, what a drag.’ </p><p>Naruto just grinned, flashing his sharp canines, ‘Oh don’t worry, Shikamaru-kun, I’m sure your genius brain can figure out how to get me to let you down.’ The trees zipped past him as Shikamaru frowned, then formed a hand-seal. </p><p>Naruto yelped and dropped Shikamaru as shadows snuck out of his orange slacks and retracted to the bulk of darkness between the trees. </p><p>‘Hentai!’ Naruto rubbed his left buttcheek. ‘I can’t believe you did that!’</p><p>Shikamaru dodged several shadow-clones, ‘You told me to figure it out.’ </p><p>‘Stop wasting stamina.’ Neji spoke up. ‘We need to make camp by sundown and we’re behind as it is.’ </p><p>Naruto makes a face and stuck out his tongue. ‘You’re such a killjoy, Neji, get that stick out of your ass, it’s not even an A-rank mission.’ </p><p>Neji paled. The twist of guilt in Shikamaru’s gut knotted instantly and he gave Naruto a small shake as they resumed their pace. </p><p> </p><p>At camp dinner consisted of singed meat from wildlife Naruto had overcooked with chakra. As Shikamaru gnawed at the leg of what he hoped was rabbit or ferret and not lizard or newt, Naruto spoke. </p><p>‘Sasuke got his mark.’ </p><p>Shikamaru’s already weaning appetite disappeared instantly at the sudden thought of an Uchiha heir.   </p><p>‘Sakura?’ He asked. </p><p>Naruto shook his head, hesitance and sadness both emotions that looked out of place on the whiskered face. </p><p>Shikamaru sighed, ‘Troublesome.’ </p><p>Naruto eyed the meat in his own hand before setting it down, ‘I haven’t found time to talk to her, and some part of me hopes he’s lying.’ His blue eyes, reflecting the orange of the flames, looked almost colourless and transparent. </p><p>Shikamaru suppressed his own fear and dared to ask, ‘What is it?’ </p><p>‘A leaf,’ Naruto responded, ‘like those in your deer forest.’ </p><p>Shikamaru jolted straight, his head turning to Neji seemed to be concentrating on his food. ‘What kind of leaf?’ For a moment he was afraid that Neji might look up and he would have to register whatever expression is on Neji’s face. </p><p>Naruto frowned as he tried to recall the details, ‘A generic looking one, like kind with pointy ends? In any case it’s not the same heart shape as the one on Sakura’s wrist, so it’s going to cause problems either way.’ </p><p>Shikamaru breathed through the hammering in his heart, there was no possible way Sasuke would know of the shape of Neji’s mark, even with the extremely unlikely chance of the two marks matching—</p><p>‘So, what’s she going to do?’ Shikamaru forced himself to concentrate on Naruto’s voice and asked. </p><p>Naruto shrugged, ‘Damned if I know. Sasuke, he, he said nothing about coming home, I—’ He grabbed his hair. ‘I’m not sure if he wants that, actually.’ </p><p>‘A bondmate?’ </p><p>Naruto tilted his head, ‘Settle down, have a family, or something like that. I don’t know if Sasuke’s ready for any of that. It might take—decades.’ </p><p>Shikamaru didn’t like Naruto like this, head lowered and face hidden in the shadows, tracing the bandages on his arm. </p><p>‘You guys ever wonder if I’ll get mine?’ Naruto asked into the silence. </p><p>The realisation slammed into Shikamaru. Of course, the wood-release, no matter how integrated, was not a part of him at the end of the day. </p><p>Neji spoke up, he was suddenly closer to Naruto than Shikamaru remembered. ‘There are alternatives, I’ve read of people getting it on their other arm, or another part of the body.’ </p><p>Naruto turned to look at Neji, who was crouched beside him, ‘But, what if…’ </p><p>‘Naruto,’ Neji’s face was serious, ‘Do you think Sakura will give up on Sasuke when she finds out that they don’t have the same mark? Are you going to stop seeing Hinata-sama if you find out she has another’s mark?’ </p><p>Naruto looked lost before the usual optimism returned to his face, and he gave Neji a smile. ‘Man, you had the right idea all along in removing it, the whole thing is bullshit.’ </p><p>Shikamaru burst out laughing at Naruto’s crass summation, Neji lifted his head and to Shikamaru’s shock gave him a smile that’s almost quirked like a smirk. </p><p>‘I may not be the best strategist of the shinobi world or the son of the previous war-leader of our village or secretary-to-be to the hokage, but I’m still a genius.’ </p><p>Shikamaru’s heart leaped to his throat, a lump as big as the size of his own head stuck inside his ribcage. </p><p>‘Oh he actually traced it for me, his mark.’ Naruto said, fishing out a folded page of letter-paper from his jacket pocket. </p><p>Shikamaru glanced at it and felt the knots in his stomach unwind, and glared at Naruto. ‘Those are pine needles! Naruto, and our forest… well I guess there are some on the outskirts because they stop the deer from leaving…’ </p><p>He actually heard an audible sigh of relief from Neji, and felt his cheeks also heat up. </p><p>Naruto rubbed his neck, ‘It’s not like I’m good with this kind of stuff, I’m not the one hanging out with Ino all the time.’ </p><p>Shikamaru and Neji were both looking at the ground and it was strange enough for Naruto to notice. ‘Why are you two worried anyway?’ </p><p>He looked between the two of them, then his eyes widened at the realisation, ‘Aha!’ Naruto pointed at Neji, as a laugh bubbled forth, ‘You actually thought your bondmate was going to be <em> Sasuke </em>!’ </p><p>‘Shut up, you idiot.’ Neji frowned, Shikamaru was captured by the tinge of colour on those pale cheeks illuminated by the orange of the flame. </p><p>Naruto was rolling around on the ground. ‘Oh. My. God! Imagine the two of you together, nothing but brooding all day.’ </p><p>Neji struck Naruto with the heel of his palm and Naruto spluttered, clutching his chest as he struggled to regain control of the chakra disrupted by the gentle-fist. ‘Better than if I were saddled with you, orange-baka! It was your mistake for misleading me like that!’ </p><p>‘Two, sticks, up, the, butt!’ Naruto managed to hack out. </p><p>Neji stood, ‘I’m going to sleep.’ He announced, turning away and ignoring Naruto who was shaking from mirth and pain. </p><p> </p><p>Shikamaru had the first watch. He also ensured to set his bedroll as far away from Naruto as possible, Neji of course was not so fortunate as to escape Naruto’s night attacks. </p><p>After a while, Neji groggily got up, straightened his bedroll, and joined Shikamaru at the watch. </p><p>‘The demon boy will be the death to us all.’ He grumbled, nursing the side bruised by Naruto’s repeated kicking.  </p><p>Shikamaru, under the moonlight, noticed that Neji’s hair was unkempt, possibly for the first time in his life. </p><p>‘You should rest, you almost became an Uchiha bride today.’ He teased, as Neji gave him a glare. </p><p>‘Could happen to you, you know?’ </p><p>Shikamaru put his hands behind his head, leaning against the bark of the tree they were perched upon. ‘As if I’d end up with something that troublesome.’ </p><p>Neji hugged one knee to his chest. ‘So what would you do if you actually got pine needles?’ </p><p>Shikamaru grinned, ‘A certain genius showed me a way.’</p><p>‘That averse to Uchiha Sasuke?’ Neji asked. </p><p>‘Neji, it’s <em> pine needles</em>, he’s <em> literally </em> a prick.’ </p><p>Neji let out a soundless goffle before he could tame his face back to nonchalance, and for maybe the millionth time in the evening Shikamaru found himself not in control of the thumping of his heart. </p><p>‘I’m sorry,’ He burst out, ‘I shouldn’t have said those things to you that time at the inn, I didn’t mean them.’ </p><p>Neji gave him a small shake of his head, ‘I should’ve been a little bit more observant than to make jokes.’ </p><p>‘Well, ok, I did mean the stick up the ass part, and you jabbed me where it stung, but I don’t mean that you don’t understand or anything like that, you know,’ Shikamaru scratched his head, ‘In any case, please just forget what we both said, ok?’ </p><p>Neji’s shoulders shook as he held back his grin, ‘This is the worst apology I’ve ever heard, You really are a rotten person.’  </p><p>A silent bell chimed inside Shikamaru’s chest, phantom snowflakes, weightless yet leaden, hammered down on his head and chest, and Shikamaru felt like he had been cursed as his eyes became glued to Neji’s peaceful face.  </p><p>Maybe it was the mussed up hair, or the gentle way Neji’s pale eyes looked at him in the moonlight, or the fact that Neji had comforted Naruto with such conviction yet tenderness, or the memory of Neji’s voice resonating in the snow—whatever it was, it compelled Shikamaru to tilt his head and lean in, muttering ‘the worst’ in agreement.</p><p>Neji’s eyes widened and he put a hand on Shikamaru’s shoulder, but he didn’t push him further, so Shikamaru pressed a chaste kiss against Neji’s thin lips. ‘Please don’t gentle-fist my ribs.’ </p><p>Neji smiled, and Shikamaru’s blood flowed in all kinds of wrong directions, he wondered if Neji could sense the irregular flow of energy in his body. </p><p>It didn’t stop him from cupping one of Neji’s cheeks, thumbing the surprisingly soft skin along Neji’s cheekbone, waiting until Neji’s lips parted in the slightest for a breath, before plunging in. </p><p>Neji gasped at the onslaught and Shikamaru took advantage of it, licking at Neji’s lips until they widened to accept his tongue. And suddenly Neji’s arms were around his shoulders and he felt the bodily shudder against his chest as Neji pressed up against him and Shikamaru plundered into the waiting cavern, finding Neji’s own heistance and sucking it out into his own body. Maybe it had been too long since he had a body so close to him and he’d forgotten how alive it felt to hold someone at this proximity but SHikamaru’s heart fluttered with each acute tremble of Neji’s torso against his own. He allowed his hands to thread through the hair at Neji’s temples as the latter’s fingers twisted in his lapel, and Shikamaru wondered if it was all progressing entirely too fast, or not nearly fast enough. </p><p>‘Sasuke-teme you prick!’ Naruto screamed in his sleep, followed by a thump where he hit the ground with either his foot or hand, and it snapped Neji and Shikamaru out of their little realm. </p><p>Neji buried his face against Shikamaru’s collarbone, the breath against Shikamaru’s skin quivering in his suppressed laughter, Shikamaru, remembering Sasuke’s soulmark, let out a shaky and nervous breath. </p><p>The moment of intimacy passed like clouds that had moved across the sky, revealing brilliant moon which cast dewy light on Neji’s shiny kiss-wetted lips. Shikamaru gave Neji a shaky smile as the latter straightened from his embrace. </p><p>‘I really, really hope I don’t get pine needles,’ he said.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. 2.6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>6.</p><p>
  <span>Their shogi matches resumed, but no longer with the same connotation. Instead, Neji brought along a small standard issue shinobi equipment bag which contained toiletries and a change of clothing. And Shikamaru came closest to losing a match in years when Neji, in the heat of the late summer dusk, pulled at his collar and revealed a hint of collarbone caressed by a single droplet of sweat that rolled down the pale column of his neck. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji looked up at him meaningfully when Shikamaru set aside the shogi piece in his hand. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘To be continued.’ He gestured at the board, as he stood, walked around to the side where Neji was seated on his knees, and sat down next to him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His deliberate action bemused Neji. ‘I’ve never seen you disinterested in shogi before, Nara-kun.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru found his usual proud brain stalling. ‘Well,’ He swallowed, covering Neji’s elongated fingers and pressed them against the tatami with his own, ‘You’ll be seeing a lot of disinterest in many things from now on.’ The sounds leaving his mouth jumbled, became nonsensical, and Shikamaru found the rest of the world around him distorting into dissonance aside from the dark haired pale eyed beauty in front of him.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji gave him that disarming smile, ‘Smooth, Shikamaru, aren’t you a genius or something?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I am nothing.’ Shikamaru surrendered, lifted the curtain of Neji’s hair from his nape, feeling the weight and softness of the strands against his fingers, and he placed a kiss at the pulse point where the column of Neji’s pale neck met his ear. Neji breathed out in an uneven shudder. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I’m nothing next to you.’ Shikamaru huffed those words against Neji’s skin, peppered more kisses along the tendon leading down Neji’s neck as Neji’s hands reached out and grabbed his forearms. ‘You’ve taken everything from me.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji twisted, flung his arms around Shikamaru’s neck, who caught him around the waist, ‘I—’ His voice was low and unsteady just like Shikamaru’s, and Shikamaru stroked his hands down the white robes as Neji cupped Shikamaru’s face between his hands. ‘I want all of it, give me all—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Down they went, upon the tatami. The screen doors opening onto the courtyard letting in long veils of the remnant sunlight as Shikamaru cushioned Neji’s head with his palm, amazed by the halo of dark pool of hair splayed out beneath Neji. The hot summer wind pushed against him until he leaned down and took possession of Neji’s lips, prying open Neji’s mouth and invading him with his own breath. The cicadas’ whistled verses of mating reverberated along the wooden frames of the residence. Shikamaru unbuttoned Neji’s robes, freeing Neji’s body from the rigid cotton, unwrapped him like a present, marvelled at the contours of Neji’s torso and the scars embellishing the pale skin. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji grabbed Shikamaru’s fingers as they danced across the round scars where the almost fatal wooden poles that had penetrated him. ‘You can tell me if they revolt you.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru shook his head, and a bead of sweat landed upon Neji’s chest, ‘Hate it? Let me demonstrate how very wrong that hypothesis is.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he sucked and licked and caressed Neji’s chest until he had decorated the pale flesh with cerise marks that stood out against Neji’s skin, all the while Neji covered his own mouth with the back of his hand as he took in increasingly louder gasps of breath. Shikamaru pulled Neji’s robe out from beneath him, and maneuvered until Neji’s quivering half-naked body was encircled in his arms. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Twin sources of heat pressed against each other as Neji’s face flared up when Shikamaru moved a thigh between his legs. Shikamaru found his own blood diverted. Something hit the tatami mat—the pale column of Neji’s arm, and the sight of Neji’s unmarked wrist made Shikamaru stop in his actions. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Do, do you wish to continue?’ He asked. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji pulled his head out from where it was buried against Shikamaru’s nape, and cocked his head, looking slightly confused. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru touched a hand to the inside of Neji’s wrist, Neji’s mouth opened as comprehension dawned upon his face. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Ah, that. That’s not my vow of chastity, Shikamaru.’ Neji returned Shikamaru’s touch with his own, stroking along Shikamaru’s pulse. ‘And I would very much like to continue.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru’s mouth dried, as he licked along the roof of his mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Shall we retreat to the bedroom in that case?’ He suggested. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji, grinning at Shikamaru’s excessive politeness, scraped his knuckle gently along the bridge of Shikamaru’s nose. ‘Lead the way.’ </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru learnt many things that night: the feel of Neji’s skin pressed against his own, the weight of Neji’s sex in his palm and later on his tongue, Neji’s grip on his own desire, stronger, more controlled and no doubt perfected by the knowledge of pressure points, lighting fire along his body until he succumbed, rolled over Neji, fitting their cocks alongside each other’s, the primordial rhythm as he ground down, Neji’s low moan and jittering gasps as he neared orgasm, and his sobs of completion. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Later, sated, but invigorated, Shikamaru lied on his side as he cleaned their chests and stomachs with a cotton cloth, marvelling at the pockets of shadows on Neji’s toned torso. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji, smiling up at him, asked him if this was all. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru responded with a tender and non-invasive kiss, held for long enough for him to convey all the promises of the more explorations to come. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji touched Shikamaru’s forearm, where the mark would be, and Shikamaru was willing to interpret it as just intimacy. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They found time for each other, though never enough. Mission and lessons and long hours at the office followed by friends eager to get together, ending with nights too short to go further than quick wrap of fingers inside robes or indulgently a rushed blowjob. Shikamaru savoured the moments of intimacy like blinks of a faint light source, every moment alone with Neji a little luminescent segment collecting like grains of sand in an hourglass. He never felt this level of virality when it came to intimacy, like a kindling flame fueled by the slightest response from Neji, right to the sway of the strands of ebony hair in the breeze. He was at once overwhelmed and immensely ravenous, almost fearfully craving for the last step in their physical exploration, yet dreading its eventuality. Mentally, of course, he had calculated, and estimated, and reached a plan without recourse. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He booked a restaurant for his birthday, warning Ino away and almost going as far as to threaten her with exposing that night with Choji which she swore never happened. And after purchasing new sheets and brand new yutakas Shikamaru felt like a housewife. Yoshino had not emerged from her bedroom, and when Shikamaru went to talk to her outside the door, she finally slipped a piece of paper from under the door indicating that she would retire for the evening at a friend’s place.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It all changed in the morning on the day he had decided to execute his plan. Shikamaru had woken up with a little leaf on his wrist, ovular, with pointed ends and serrated edges, and panicked. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. 2.7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>7.</p><p>Like all other kids, the bond had been introduced to Shikamaru as a story, but because Yoshino had a special kid who wouldn’t stop asking why, she had taken the three-year-old Shikamaru, who by then already knew more kanji than the picture book she gave him and can outpace her in arithmetic calculations, to the Valley of the End.  </p><p>Shikamaru had laughed when she carried him through the trees on her back. To him the journey was no different from flying, just like how his mother, who was all providing, was in a way no different from the kami that protected their home and their forest. </p><p>Yoshino hovered on top of the waterfall before landing on a patch of grass not far from the enormous facade of Shodaime, and she pointed to the faint but distinctive engraving of the Konoha leaf on the wrist of the statue’s raised hand. </p><p>‘That,’ she said, ‘is the trace which evidences the existence of our soul. As we are descended from the World Tree, and are the closest in connection to our ancestors who came from the stars, they gave each a half of a whole existence, so we will always bear a mark which is identical to another’s, and once we find that other, our souls will be complete. We are the leaves on the branches that stem from the great space tree, and each of our light, will find its shadow.’ </p><p>Shikamaru liked the gigantic statues, whose eyeballs were as big as his father’s intricately embroidered shoji screens, and he was little but he understood the solemnity of the moment to simply admire the sight before him instead of demanding his mother for further explanations. The rush of the waterfall deafening in his ear and the tiny splashes of water pinpricks of cold against his face, as he reached out and traced the konoha leaf both on the First’s forehead protector as well as more subtly and significantly on his wrist in midair, his fingers drawing shadows in the sun. </p><p> </p><p><em> You have to accept the consequences of your decisions. </em>His old-man, or Asuma-sensei, had told him one indistinguishable day after he had lost a match against them in shogi. Shikamaru was not expecting the disintegration to be so fast, of how quickly his memory of his father bled around the edges and merged with that of Asuma-sensei to the point where he could not even remember who said what in most contexts. When they, like shadows, overlapped due to the proximity in his mind. Death deletes solidarity like that. Sometimes, even Inoichi-jii would get mixed into the batch: the ugly conglomerate of haunting in his mind of the people he’d lost too soon and too quickly for his brain to distinguish and isolate into singularity. </p><p>Shadow manipulation had been of course taught by his father, who made him close his eyes and feel the shape of his shadow for weeks on end before he taught Shikamaru any hand seals or chakra manipulation. Shikamaru never managed to feel anything other than a vague blur, even when he was older, and shadow-manipulation had felt no different from other ninjutsu, and he was able to more or less be adept at it enough to perform it by knowing, but not understanding the true nature of the yin-release. The blur had troubled him despite it being no longer as relevant in terms of utility. It wasn’t until after he went into Neji’s soul-realm and saw himself had the understanding began to dawn on him. And now, staring at the mark identical to the one he had plucked from his phantom-self’s hand within those glowing axes all those months ago, Shikamaru reeled from the revelation—he had found the true path to the yin-release, an epiphany, a road that lead to true manipulation of the jutsu. </p><p>Along with the epiphany came the weight of reality and no small degree of apprehension: of the solid shadow of his soulmark, beaconing and cautioning—the permanent shadow of an abandoned light. </p><p>His shadow had told him he had made a mistake and Shikamaru, his ego inflated and wreaked with denial, had the audacity to dismiss the confrontation as self-doubt. </p><p>He clutched his wrist as fear coursed through his blood, more elusive than any shadow cast by light.  </p><p>Beside him his sensei’s cigarette carton lay opened, its contents half spilled out; in front of him, his father watched on with an ever-peaceful smile, his portrait adorned by a single acorn; a little further beyond the walls of the courtyard, incense burned in front of the shrine of Inoichi-jiisan, scenting the petals of the flowers of Ino’s proudest ikebana arrangements every day with wispy sandalwood. </p><p>The pain registered so late upon Shikamaru’s wrist when he pressed the lit end of the cigarette against his soulmark it gave him enough instance to doubt himself three times over: first, at his conviction of the action backed by evidentiary and causational reasoning; second, at the exact person who issued the decree for Shikamaru to bear the consequences of his decision; and finally, at the existence of pain all together, if for some strange reason he had lost the ability to feel the burn, that his body had stopped registering more hurt on top of pre-existing pain. </p><p>The doubt cushioned the impact of the sting when it pierced the dense clout of his thoughts, but was not enough for him to refrain from doubling over, and screaming out loud.  </p><p>Across the residence, Yoshino closed her eyes, her face wet, like they were still standing at the waterfall, at the Valley of the End.</p>
<hr/><p>END OF PART 2</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. 3.0</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span class="big">PART 3 </span>
</p><p>
  <span>0.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of the three instances when Neji had come face to face with death Shikamaru was directly involved in two of them to a capacity that he essentially facilitated Neji’s brush with the shinigami, and for the third he had been an observer but not un-implicit though Neji was willing to make that concession in his mind. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he was twelve and a child and had his ass and more importantly his ego handed to him by the then underdog of the chunin exams who was also the object of his cousin’s endured affection and eventually the hero of the village, Shikamaru had approached him shortly afterwards, and had a talk with Neji which turned out to be the first time anyone had ever engaged with Neji on that intellectual level—that of an adult and an equal.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His sensei was by far the most outrageous jounin Neji ever had the necessity of interactions with. It did not help that Lee had worshipped him to the point of downing the hideous green jumpsuit like they were courtly jesters, and Tenten, though she was outwards opposed to the other two’s tendencies towards excessive and unpragmatic displays of passion, was herself not immune to be infected by the progeny of excess, having made her weapon-summoning increasingly elaborate and superfluous throughout the years. Neji was the only one who understood the concept of restraint as strength, both in the arena of combat and everyday conduct. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Shikamaru, who was to be the squad leader—the only chunin (newly appointed at that) in a S-class mission which in hindsight was so far beyond their level it was a miracle how Neji had not noticed that they were essential body buffers Tsunade had thrown to distract from the increasingly out-of-control situation, had been the one who had made him aware of that fact to begin with, which led to his first brush with death.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Before they left Shikamaru had come to find Neji, who was still in bandages and nursing both physical injury as well as injury to his pride brought on by his defeat at Naruto’s hand as he reevaluated the preconceptions he had about his family.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Killing intent,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Shikamaru had asked him, </span>
  <em>
    <span>I want to ask how you go about having that.</span>
  </em>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Neji had been confused and ashamed and was about to express his displeasure at being reminded of his moment of lack of control when Shikamaru shook his head. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘We’re going to need that, on this mission.’  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji formed his usual frown of irritation. ‘Why would that even be necessary?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘I could’ve won against her, had I had the right mentality—if I had what you possessed when you fought your cousin, that is. I didn’t know how to close out the match, the absence held me back.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji gritted his teeth. ‘You had restraint whereby I had been provoked into acting on abandon and had forgone my own morality and honour.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘And that’s what I need, for this mission.’ Shikamaru clarified. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji’s eyes widened. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘The restraint for me will always be there—unwillingness to play the final move. My old man and Asuma-sensei have both said that to me. Maybe it’s my laziness, maybe it’s something else.’ He bit his lips and frowned almost like he was stumped for an answer. ‘I don’t feel the edge of desperation that you had felt.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji stood there feeling like someone had possessed him with shadows. As Shikamaru spoke monotonously of Neji as if he were no more than a dead piece of shogi with </span>
  <em>
    <span>‘killing intent’ </span>
  </em>
  <span>engraved upon it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘But we’re so far out of our depths and I need someone who can play the finishing move, someone who recognises when the endgame approaches. You’re the only one, Neji.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji thought about Naruto, of his tendency to lecture his opponents and entirely too much annoying optimism, of Shino’s enigmatic and introverted distance, and of Choji’s proximity to their squad leader, and realised that he had no room for refusal. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I’ll be there to see it through to the end.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course, he never got to see it through to the end. Because as it turned out it didn’t matter whether you had killing intent or no killing intent when your body is being ground up inside air-blades like in a blender. Laughably his first thought when he had woken up from the medically-induced coma was regret that he hadn’t managed to keep his original promise to his squad leader—that he hadn’t been of use to Shikamaru the way Shikamaru had intended.   </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His willingness to play the pawn to Shikamaru’s wargame had almost gotten himself killed. Beyond the generic factors of duty to the village and belief in his fellow shinobi, Shikamaru had merely framed the conversation that particular way for Neji to be invested, for him to willingly go to lengths beyond his own capabilities and comfort, something he wouldn’t do again for a very long time, until the war. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Killing intent obviously found a way to manifest within the strategist sometimes after that retrieval mission (most likely from the death of his sensei) because there had been no shadow of hesitation when Shikamaru executed the procedure in erasing Neji’s soulmark, ie. the third time Shikamaru had been the cause for Neji’s brush with death. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru later told Neji, long after the mishap which resulted in Tsunade-sama having to reconstruct all of his cardio-vascular channels, that he had encountered a version of himself during the procedure, and talked to the visage, and ignored his own phantom-self’s warning. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji wanted to congratulate him while sixty-four palm him—not with gentle-fist, but with slaps. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Being possessed—that’s what it felt like, being friends and later being intimate with Shikamaru—because he always made you feel like you’ve signed on to a game you’re playing with him whereby you’re uncertain of either the rules or the conditions for victory. He felt for Temari-san on a spiritual level when she fanned Shikamaru into a wall, because dating a genius was infuriating and reactionary—like being controlled by Shikamaru’s shadow-bind, finding yourself caring for his attention, like a pawn caring for the player’s eventual outcome in the game. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Their dynamic had remained essentially unchanged since that conversation they had before the retrieval mission—with Shikamaru demanding something else other than killing intent from Neji, and Neji constantly re-evaluating his worth to the shadow-master, like a pathetic pawn.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was no longer willing, Neji thought, to be the pawn this time around. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. 3.1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>1.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Insight of course had come after the fact. He had woken up on September 22nd with a mild sense of dread. His nascent relationship with Shikamaru was still in its exploratory phase whereby they were still mapping out the edges of intimacy, like wading into deeper water. The soulmark issue a flashing sign he had not had time to attend to due to how all-consuming it had been—being with Shikamaru—who lavished over Neji, held his gaze with those intense and narrow eyes that burned flames inside him and made the usual presence of restraint and control feel redundant. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Promise and potential had overwhelmed Neji, the seeds planted long before Shikamaru’s pained face after his breakup with Temari, maybe much earlier than Neji had been aware of, before that fateful night in the Nara forest, before those shogi matches, maybe it was when Shikamaru was the one to recognise Neji’s absolutism as something other than just cruelty. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji had cursorily entertained a few possibilities: of Shikamaru leaving him to go mate-searching like Choji had done, of Shikamaru’s bondmate being in Konoha and Shikamaru relenting their relationship either by choice or by his clan or family’s insistence(neither seemed very in character of the lazy nature of said man). At the end of the day his and Shikamaru’s relationship had not yet blossomed into something that demanded nurture of commitment or exclusivity. Neji considered himself someone entirely capable of handling the eventual parting with a lot more grace and a lot less violence than Temari. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji shocked himself with the realisation that he had not put much contemplation into these possibilities. It had been pretty obvious from Shikamaru’s willingness to assist Neji and his callous approach to Temari’s confession that the mark on the wrist was exactly that—merely cosmetic if a troublesome inconvenience—as he deemed most matters unable to be resolved immediately. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Somehow he completely overlooked the third possibility (or it may have been willful negligence) so Neji was woefully unprepared mentally when he had walked into the Nara household on Shikamaru’s birthday and smelt burnt flesh and sensed two separate but collectavelly rasping breaths.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Scanning with his byakugan revealed Yoshino in her bedroom, kneeling on the floor next to a zashiki, though fraught with sobs her chakra appeared undisrupted. Neji discerned no immediate danger around her. Closer to him in proximity and of much more urgency was Shikamaru, on the engawa where they first had their talk almost a year ago, also kneeling. Neji detected rapid breathing, elevated heart rate, as well as no small amount of pain. Eyes straining in the dense overcast that darkened the entire courtyard, Neji approached Shikamaru: bent over on his knees, a cigarette butt burning a hole into the aged maple flooring beside him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji swept his robes as he crouched next to Shikamaru. ‘Are you—’ He started to speak when a detail captured both by sensory observation as well as detected by his byakugan rendered him speechless.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru’s right wrist was badly burned. Singed flesh and skin giving off a sharp odour that reminded Neji of the kitchen in the Hyuuga complex before mealtime. On the inside of Shikamaru’s wrist where the soulmark should be was instead a mess of circular boils where skin had shrivelled and peeled back, oozing a mixture of puss and blood. The signals of pain, radiated from the wound, quivering and tremouring through Shikamaru’s entire being, and when he looked at Neji his face had acquired more lines than Neji remembered, suddenly aging him. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>‘Some consider it a rite of passage, signifying growing up from a boy to a man..’ </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru’s own words rang through his head in the instance when Neji grabbed Shikamaru's arm. The other flinched, mostly from the pain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji pulled the limb towards him and stared at the grotesque burn in speechlessness. The existence of the dark ink-like symbol indiscernible amidst mangled flesh. Shikamaru’s furrowed brows and twisted mouth gave away Shikamaru’s anguish. And that previously unconsidered third possibility slammed into Neji like a wooden spike through his chest. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji didn’t want to accept it—his implicit partiality. And he wasn’t a strategist who contemplated permutations or probabilities or wargames or the killing intent of his pawns, so he could only hold the mutilated wrist of his lover and let himself be consumed by rage and indignation and shame. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Why did you do it?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The question felt stupid and redundant but it prompted Shikamaru to withdraw from Neji’s grasp. He covered his messy wound with his other hand, hissing from the contact, adding fire to Neji’s simmering anger by shrugging and forcing out the ugliest smile Neji had ever seen on him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘We all have a choice whether to accept our destiny, no?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji veered back as if he had been slapped in the face. ‘Don’t bullshit me, Nara, why’d you go and do something so drastic! What could you possibly have—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru grabbed Neji’s lapel and dragged him forward, the smell of his burnt flesh close to Neji’s face. ‘Don’t bullshit me? I seem to recall someone willing to risk their life just to rid themselves of the mark and now you’re not accepting your own reasoning for a much less serious procedure? My choice, Hyuuga, and I can bullshit you if I choose.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji elbowed him but Shikamaru had let go as soon as he was done speaking. Neji stood up, shaking. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Shikamaru, you are not me. Therefore do not use my excuse to justify your actions. My actions were born out of necessity due to my circumstances of birth—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At that, Shikamaru scoffed and shoved his hands inside his sleeves. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Yes, necessity, indeed, o-Hyuuga-sama, burdened with great suffering like you are the only one to be bound by circumstances outside your own control.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji didn’t know he could despise Shikamaru this much, the uncanny observations and wit he knew but didn’t think would ever be turned upon him blades slicing at his skin. This was hundred-folds worse than their confrontation outside the inn, when Shikamaru had called him an arrogant prick. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘This isn’t about me, Shikamaru.’ He reasoned, or tried to, the words came out snapping and cracking like a whip and the flash of hurt across Shikamaru’s face made Neji want to take back what he said. But just like in their shogi matches, he was too slow to read the play—because Shikamaru also got to his feet, coming face to face with Neji, still attempting to mask his pain by trying to revert his face to the previous sneer but utterly failing, and the grimaced facade drove the spike home. Neji braced himself against the onslaught of acrid burn coiling deep inside himself, knowing it was as futile as anchoring a raft amidst the wrath of the ocean. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘For once, am I right? Hyuuga? Your keen observation is noted and on that deduction you have no part in my decision nor do I owe you any form of explanation whatsoever, now please vacate my home. I no longer welcome your company.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Why does it always have to be like this? Shikamaru, I’m trying to understand, I’m trying to help. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>A less proud person might have said, or a more forgiving one, but Neji was neither. He was Shikamaru’s pawn. He came and went at his bidding, and didn’t have the capacity to prevent the forfeit when Shikamaru stomped on the long-extinguished cigarette-butt and stalked inside, clinging his robes tight around his body as he slammed the screen door so hard the entire building seemed to rattle from the force. Neji gritted his teeth until he tasted copper. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Why do you always push me away?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>A more selfish person might have asked, or less guarded one, but Neji was neither. So he could only keep on staring at the empty engawa long after Shikamaru had retreated, leaving him alone in the brooding storm, alone amidst the deafening rustling of leaves, and the unfinished game of shogi, dead pieces strewn about around the board, uncertain if they’ll ever make it onto the board once again.  </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. 3.2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>2.</p><p>
  <span>After spending the night dwelling over his history with Shikamaru and where it had gone so collosslly wrong (including unnecessarily fixating on the aforementioned conversation about killing intent and obvious possibilities that truly should not have but in actual fact did slip his mind) Neji could not come to anything remotely close to resembling a conclusion, so he decided to take a page out of Naruto’s book: act first, think later. It would not have been what Shikamaru would have wanted from him, but he had had enough of going along with what Shikamaru wanted. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>However, when he arrived at the Nara household the next morning, there was no one there. Even Yoshino was gone, the screen door to her quarters left open to let in the autumn breeze to sweep through the veiled room. Neji stood in the middle of the courtyard and willed the palpitations in his chest to go away. This set of circumstances  was not in direct correlation to him and Shikamaru, he reasoned, Yoshino was still human she still needed to eat and bathe and was bound to leave the residence for supplies and necessities on occasion. It could very well be a frequent occurrence that Neji just never happened upon prior. After all, his visits to this household had not been frequent enough as to alert the other residents, and Shikamaru had not introduced Neji to his mother (or his friends and acquaintances) in a manner which would warrant for Neji to account for their whereabouts—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Though Neji had been introduced to Shikamaru’s father or sensei, however it had been Neji who took the initiative in visiting them in the—)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji closed his eyes. These were not issues that should be deemed of pertenance at this particular moment, yet his mind snagged on those thoughts, refusing to let them go. </span>
  <em>
    <span>It’s not as if you introduced him to your family and acquaintances</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Neji argued with himself. But his circumstances are once again too different for comparison. He was expelled from his clan and warned away from the Hyuuga compound and the only members of his family he still kept in contact with were Hinata-sama and Hanabi-sama, to whom he felt no necessity of re-introducing Shikamaru, especially given how difficult it would be to iterate exactly what he and Shikamaru are and how that was different from how they were. And bothering Gai-sensei with something like this during his treatment seemed so inconsiderate it was almost laughable. As for Lee and Tenten, well, it was not as if Shikamaru showed any inclination in contacting his out-of-village best-friend or having a talk with his sister-from-another-mister—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji clenched his fists. He didn’t need this right now, all this speculation of where things could and might have gone when what happened here yesterday might just adduce how right he had been to hold off from further commitment into this thing that was both too intense yet too volatile to be called a relationship: this trap, this quicksand that bogged him down as he grappled and failed and sunk deeper until he began to think about the play Shikamaru was about to make, until his actions began aligning with the strategist’s opaque and obscured moves. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji stalked the empty residence in frustration, throwing open the doors and drawers to the cupboards and closets then slamming them shut in blatant discourtesy but finding nothing other than chattels of mundane domesticity, only stopping when he had rifled through all but Yoshino’s quarters. He returned to the courtyard and with his byakugan scanned every crevice of the residence: from the weeds grow between the tiles on the oddly level rooftops to the leaf-clogged rain gutters to the lichen growing along the exposed stone foundation that in the cellar connected with the mould that lined the spaces between those stones all the way down to the secret passages beneath (that no doubt lead to the Akimichi or Yamanaka households). And failing to sense even one shred of human existence, he sat down in the shades of the great tree in the middle of the courtyard, facing the engawa where that initial conversation had taken place, where fatefully he had shown Shikamaru his mark. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His uncle had been an adamant propagator of meditation, it had been his favourite kind of discipline. Whenever Neji or any of his daughters ever stepped out of line, meditation had been what Hiashi-sama resorted to (contrary to the many rumours of the existence of torture within the Hyuuga household, Neji had never been subject to anything else worse than trying to stay awake under the sweltering sun after sitting in the same spot for so long sweat stained his robes beneath his numb buttcheeks). Neji never saw any use for it, having never once experienced the clarity and tranquility it supposedly invoked. Nevertheless, it was the only option Neji could think to undertake under the expansive foliage of the great tree within the empty household. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Empty your mind, </span>
  </em>
  <span>his uncle used to say, a phrase which sounded redundant and ridiculous. Neji could will his mind to focus on the most minute of details in his surroundings or on his opponents—with his ability he could sense the slightest of vibrations, the smallest of movement. But to focus on nothing, that to him was no different from being unconscious, or asleep. Here, in this trespassed space, it was an even more impossible feat. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Focus on your own presence, </span>
  </em>
  <span>his uncle would advise, when he noticed Neji’s agitation back when they were children and the three of them were forced to go through this on a daily basis. Neji remembered sneaking glances at Hinata-sama and Hanabi-sama, marvelling at the evenness of their heartbeats, the stillness that he could not endure, the peace he could not attain, had never reached— </span>
</p><p>
  <span>—Except for those times, when he breached the border between this existence and the next—when he approached the brink. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He foraged for the memory of his glimpse to the other side but instead recalled the conscious presence of pain, the urgency to save Hinata-sama, him reassuring Naruto of the worth of his actions as the other’s tears scalded hotter than his kyuubi-chakra on his shoulder. Then what? Silence? A kind of certainty? The illusive sensation locked away behind a gate which he could only sometimes sense in his dreams, phantom figures of his parents that might have been more projection than manifestation, his mind working to bridge a gap in him where that absence resided wherein others must feel fear— </span>
</p><p>
  <span>What had Shikamaru seen in his soul-realm? Neji could not recall any sensation associated with the experience at all, allowing someone else in and in some way Neji didn’t even believe that experience </span>
  <em>
    <span>could </span>
  </em>
  <span>render any sensation. Shikamaru was telling him to sit down facing away from him one second and the next Neji was gagging, struggling to breathe as Tsunade’s healing chakra permeated him, reconnecting his chakra-channels which had been fissured by the yin-yang convection, threads of life-energy growing inside him to sew his soul to the land of the living— </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji clutched his chest as his heart threatened to jump out of his ribcage due the anxiety incurred by his mind abutting the edge of that impossible stillness, when he sensed fingers grazing the fence that bordered the residence, before he heard the opening of the front gate. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His body acted on instinct, his eyes activating as he leapt over the roof to land in the small recess in the fence that was the landing for the front gate. Palm out, already glowing pale blue, one second too late in realising that the intruder was just Yamanaka Ino holding a bouquet of flowers in a straw-woven basket. Neji managed to pull back only enough for the hit not to connect, which unfortunately was not enough for the force of the gentle-fist to ricochet through the floral arrangement Ino was holding, rending the plants before sending them upwards in a whirlwind of vibrant disarray.</span>
</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. 3.3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <ol>

</ol><p> </p><p>
  <span>Ino stumbled back and gasped in shock. For one moment the two of them stood at the gate as shreds of petals and leaves and stems fell upon them.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ino fell to her knees, eyes darting around at the panoply of purple and pink and coral and yellow. Neji caught a relatively intact bloom in his hand, studying its vaguely familiar outline, he jolted when he recognized the shape. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ino stood up, dusting off her skirt, and turned to Neji, who braced himself for the ‘wrath-of-troublesome-women’ as Shikamaru had recounted on many occasions, but Ino only tilted her head as she regarded Neji with notable confusion. ‘Were you trying to kill me?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji shook his head vehemently. ‘I didn’t mean—’ He held out the flower in his hand for her, but as he did it, the petals fell from the stamen, leaving behind a spiky stump.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji stood awkwardly, unsure whether he should lower his hand or not. ‘I was trying to meditate, but—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ino took the bald stem from him. Her eyes flitted back to Neji’s face, a slight frown between her eyebrows. ‘Meditating?’ she said slowly. ‘I, I think you might be doing it wrong?’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I— I’m sorry.’ Neji shoved his hands into his sleeves. ‘I didn’t intend to attack you.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ino waved her hands, ‘Well if you had no intention then there’s no need for apologies,’ She looked around at the disintegrated plants, ‘Though you did destroy the arrangement I wanted to give to Shikaku-ojiisan.’ She said somewhat regrettably but with virtually none of the outburst Shikamaru had warned about.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji swallowed, ‘They’re—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Cosmos,’ Ino said, as she flicked a petal off her shoulder, ‘it’s the genus of the flower.’ She gave Neji a somewhat sheepish smile: ‘I know how trivial this all must seem to you.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji shook his head. ‘I—’ He didn’t know how to continue. The smell of burnt flesh and nicotine seemed to suddenly waft from the house behind him as his ribcage tightened around his heart for one instant. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ino noticed his change in demeanor. ‘So, meditating at Shikamaru’s led you to attack visitors, huh?’ She asked, her voice tinged with a slight inflection of curiosity at the prospect of gossip. ‘Everything ok with you?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji shook his head again, swallowing. Before he bowed, ‘I’m sorry about your arrangement.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ino played with the step in her hand, ‘They’re just flowers. I can always make another bouquet.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘But they’re not just—’ Neji swallowed before continuing hesitantly. ‘They’re Sai’s mark, aren’t they?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ino sniggered. ‘My, my, you’re more observant than I had taken you for, Hyuuga Neji.’ Discarding the plant, she flipped up her forearm protector to show Neji the delicate flower resting between her veins, identical to the shape the torn pieces would have originally been. ‘And after today, it’s also mine.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji couldn’t look at the slight blush that tinged Ino’s cheeks—the colour of happiness that he had so cruelly denied for himself and Shikamaru. If he never had the mark removed, would Shikamaru have presented the news of his mark to Neji in a totally different manner, if in fact— </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘It’s my birthday today.’ Ino added when Neji didn’t muster up a response.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji whipped his face to the side. Embarrassed by his loss of control. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ino peered at him. ‘Hey, are you ok? Look I know that you are dismissive of this whole soulmark business but I didn’t realise that my mark would cause you this much distress, unless you’re like, in love with Sai or something like that.’  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ino’s outlandish assumption caused Neji to whip his head up in startelement— ‘No of course not, I just—’ Meeting her eyes, he noticed a glint of amusement in them that indicated she’d been successful in getting a rise from him, Neji felt his face heat up, and turned away, willing the stinging behind his eyes to go away. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ino, unable to ameliorate Neji’s distress, licked her lips as she rolled down her forearm protector, ‘Ok, seems I came at a bad time. Could you let Shikamaru know that I’m still waiting for my Nara soba and he can’t hide his mark from me forever—’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘He—’ Neji shocked himself with how raspy his voice had gotten, it must have shocked Ino as well, because she took a physical step back from him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji swallowed, gravity pulling at his entire being until he hunkered down, slumping upon the stone foundation of the fence, his limbs heavy, like that time Lee had strapped leaden weights to them while Neji was asleep. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>After excessive swallowing and pathetic failed attempts to control his breathing, Neji finally choked out. ‘He burned it off, his mark.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>After a long silence, Ino sighed, and leaned on the fence beside him, her shadow falling at his feet, darkening and lightening with the passing of clouds across the sun. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Does this have anything to do with him removing your mark?’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji looked up at her. His face must have betrayed too much alarm, as Ino shook her head. ‘Lying bastard.’ She said under her breath, before she turned to Neji. ‘When I asked him if he had anything to do with it, he lied to me.’ She explained. ‘How did he do it?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Soul-realm, he called it.’ Neji spoke around the lump of air threatening to suffocate him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ino’s face paled, before she gritted her teeth. ‘Reckless asshole.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘It’s my—’ Neji covered his eyes and pressed his fingers against his throbbing eyelids, ‘I was the one who insisted that he help me, and due to that he thought—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘What was it?’ Ino interrupted curtly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji looked up at her, confused. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Your mark, was it his?’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji felt the air in his throat expand and block up his breathing, the question he had been dreading to hear and unprepared to answer hanging between them like a phantom shadow. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I—I don’t know.’ Neji finally managed to get the words out from around the lump in his throat. ‘He burned it off before I had a chance to see—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ino was looking at him, her fine eyebrows furrowed tightly, ‘Oak, it’s the genus for the Nara family, if you sketch it out for me I can probably—’  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji shook his head vehemently. ‘It matters not, whether it was my mark or not, because it was me who made it clear that I reject the concept of the mark altogether. In removing my own mark I made it out as if I, I wouldn’t accept if he had his either—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji closed his eyes, Shikamaru’s badly masked pain floated up in his mind, and Neji wished for the light to stop moving in front of his eyes, but the sunlight, like an alien creature, glinted across the stones of the sidewalk and the riven blossoms of Ino’s bouquet.   </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘It wasn’t my intention. I just—’ Neji lifted his arm, letting his sleeves slide down to reveal the unmarked wrist. ‘I couldn’t, I couldn’t stand living with it.’ He was shocked when he realised he could no longer recall the exact shape of it, and the absence felt as much like a mark as the leaf ever had been. ‘But, I shouldn’t have made him complicit, I shouldn’t have given him the idea—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ino snorted, as Neji looked up at her, in the sunlight her profile was pale and almost semi-transparent. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘You attribute entirely too much of your own agency to something you don’t understand, Hyuuga Neji.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji jolted, as Ino shook her head, letting out a bitter laugh. ‘You think that it’s something you can reject, and remove, your connection to fate, that it’s something within our control. You think that by not associating yourself with it you won’t be influenced by it somehow.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji swayed, feeling like the words were uppercut punches to his jaw delivered by the then scrappy boy-of-no-stature-nor-importance in orange, so vivid was this memory he had to clutch his face to reaffirm that indeed his jaw had not been dislocated once again.   </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ino continued, ‘But it’s not possible, controlling fate, or even reaching some kind of comprehension. Even when it gives you something you thought you wanted, it still feels wrong, like you’re not supposed to have it, like you don’t deserve it, like it knows you better than yourself, like it’s telling you that your thoughts and knowledge, and existence, is somehow misunderstood. And shows you how ignorant you are, and always will be, no matter how hard you try to adapt.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She was staring at her own forearm protector. Neji realised that she wasn’t talking about him anymore. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘And how do you come to terms with that? How do you just accept an answer when you don’t even know the question?’   </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ino buried her face in her face, sliding down along the gate until she perched upon the stone foundation, alongside Neji. And the two of them sat there, against the fence of the silent and empty residence, their distinct and separate shadows both steeped in the strange and brilliant sunlight, the ruined corpses of flowers strewn about in front of them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finally Ino wiped her face and stood up. ‘I’m going to get more flowers.’ She said. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Ino-san,’ Neji didn’t want her to leave, even if her presence disquieted him, somehow having her here was easier than being by himself. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ino looked at him and her face was filled with pain. And Neji knew that he should not keep her. His path to correct the error of his ways was his own to tread—a journey that had begun a long time ago, longer than he had previously perceived, long before those instances of peace that he had sought to recapture.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I’m sure things will work out for you.’  He said, though it sounded redundant, nonsensical, almost.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Neji was humbled and scared when Ino thinned her lips and nodded gravely, like it was a necessity for her to hear them—like Neji’s words had value.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. 3.4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>4.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His sensei’s quarters were quiet. The hospital had vacated a whole suite for him in the long-term-care floor and the place had been arranged to resemble Gai-sensei’s apartment, though Neji saw that green curtains and rugs couldn’t quite cover up the original colour of the walls and flooring. Right now, in an increasingly-less-rare moment of inactivity, Maito Gai parked his wheelchair next to the window, looking out onto the grounds of the hospital. He turned and gave Neji a full-toothed grin as Neji entered. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Ah, my dear student, how fortuitous this day is now that I have the pleasure of your company. Though indeed you do look troubled, please, share your concerns with me so we may reinvigorate your spirit.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji returned his sensei’s enthuse with a small smile. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘How are you feeling, sensei?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gai gave him a thumbs up. ‘Better than yesterday which in itself was an improvement from the day before that! Tsunade-sama has been making progress with my chakra-channels and tells me that soon they can remove some of the regulators, I’ll be able to return to my home at that moment.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji put a hand on his sensei’s shoulder. ‘Gai-sensei, I—I haven’t visited as often and for that I’m sorry—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gai patted his hand. ‘Absolutely no need to apologise, Neji-kun, I understand your pain each time you see me in this state, and would not wish to burden you with unhappy thoughts. I do miss the days when we could take missions together, and am infinitely happy that you are still such an integral part of the Konoha shinobi force. All of my dear students have survived and are thriving in this new world. Words cannot express my gratitude at that.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji leaned against the windowsill. ‘Gai-sensei, I’m sure you’ll get well enough that we can take missions together again.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji was not prepared to see the flash of anguish across his sensei’s face and his guilt returned anew, but Gai’s grin returned and for a moment Neji doubted his own eyes—many firsts for him today. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Outside the window in the courtyard a group of children and a few medics seemed to be engaged in an intense ball-game of sorts that had the kids rigid with anticipation, their backs tensed as they concentrated on the ball in the referee’s hand. Neji realised he could not relate to this carefree vision of markless days, ever since he was little he had been marked, destiny a shackle alongside the memory of his father’s death. Contrastingly his sensei sitting across from him had been a firm believer of making one’s own destiny, and trained Lee and Neji and Tenten indiscriminately and had on more-than-one occasion proved by force that his taijutsu was superior regardless of his natural talents. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji never realised just how much of Gai’s fate he had taken on, in a way his sensei was the perfect mentor for him, and probably the reason why he never lost faith like Sasuke, though he harboured no less hatred. Yet now, with the sun’s rays illuminating the lines upon his sensei’s face acquired by the war, Neji was reminded of the cruel workings of fate. Neji looked down at his own unmarked wrist, feeling like he was folding in upon himself in the presence of his sensei. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gai must have noticed his unease, because he asked: ‘Are you doing well, Neji-kun? I heard the unfortunate decision of your clan from Tsunade-sama.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji whipped his head up. ‘I—’ He shook his head, ‘It was in response to a decision I had made of my own accord, I—it was within reason for them to cast me out, actually, I expected much worse.’ He looked down, ‘My cousins keep me informed, and whether or not I stay at the residence doesn’t change my loyalty to my clan. I—I can’t help but feel uncertain at times, for doing something so—absolute. And,’ He swallowed hard, his stomach contracting from a sudden acute burn, ‘for possibly causing grief to others as a result.’  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gai did not speak for a long time, perhaps it was to make sure that Neji was done talking, and when he did, his voice was measured, and distant, with a reminiscent tone that almost bordered on nostalgia. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘For the longest time, I did not harbour hope of finding my bondmate.’ He said, looking out of the window, ‘I had never met anyone with even remotely close markings as my own and had come to terms with that a long time ago. You know that I consider myself a self-made man, my father had nothing to pass on to me aside from his passion and commitment and his ultimate legacy of sacrifice. I was far from the only one, and the pain of never finding my mate did not measure up to the loss of those who had their mate taken away from them, like my eternal rival, who shared my solitude. For decades, he seemed to have come to peace with the fact that his bondmate may have passed away in childhood and voluntarily gave up the possibility of alternatives when he made the decision to join ANBU. I compare my own destiny to those like him and felt unjust in feeling sorry for myself, so I cast it aside, my hopes for finding my mate. And the reinforcement bias naturalized my mentality of scarcity. For the longest time, I convinced myself that since there was so little possibility, it was wrong to even hope.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji stayed stone still, he couldn’t remember another time when he might have listened to his sensei this intensely. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘In the war I did not think of the future, for worrying about what would happen after the war was an irresponsible thing to do. I forego all thoughts, especially the idea that after so many years my bondmate might have been in front of me this entire time, it seemed ludicrous to even allow that to be taken into consideration. I threw myself into it—the war, had laid my life down and was ready to perish along with the ultimate foe. When I woke up, I couldn’t really come to accept that I had to go on living, in a much more different, diminished capacity as well, and it wasn’t until Lee burst into my room with the clover upon his wrist—my clover—that jolted me from my post coma stupor. I may have shed some shameful tears, after so long, it seemed unfair that I cannot give him more than myself in this state. For a long time, I thought the fates may have played a cruel, intentional joke.’ Gai closes his eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji clutched the windowsill beneath his hands, afraid of missing one syllable. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘So you see, Neji-kun, us adults do not have things figured out to their full capacity no matter how much we pretend that we do, even someone like myself who tries at every instance to be forthright and honest. We cannot predict the consequences of our decisions, in almost five decades of my life upon this plane of reality, I never thought I would come to regret exertion of effort, but, here we are.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gai shook his head and wiped at the corner of his eyes with his thumb, ‘Those who die before us, Asuma-san, Shikaku-san, Inoichi-san, are the fortunate. For they will not have to live with the aftermath of pity and doubt their sacrifices.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji recalled Shikamaru’s silence in regards to his own mother, of the acorn that adorned his father’s shrine, and the carton of cigarettes that ultimately burned more than just the wooden flooring of the Nara residence, and had a sudden urge to embrace his sensei, but he knew that pity was not something Gai needed, and was reaffirmed when Gai continued. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘But we live with our decisions, Neji, and me spending the rest of my life in the company of Lee is a luxury I did not deserve, but my guilt is ultimately just my sentiment. I’m sorry I do not have more wisdom or insight to guide you. At some point, we outgrow our mentors, and the three of you have done so a long time ago—’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji reached out as he felt himself tip over, off balance, he slid across the floor and onto his knees at his sensei’s feet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘You’ll always be my sensei,’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>If he were Lee, or even Tenten, he’d be able to find more words to express his gratitude towards the man in front of him, to tell him how thankful he was for his survival, but Neji had always been and would always be the awkward and withdrawn one of a group of extraverts, and could only lay his head upon Gai’s knees as he succumbed to sentiment. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gai said no more, as no further words were needed. And Neji, for the first time, perhaps, remembered the way those dense leaves rustled deep in the Nara forest where Shikamaru took him to fulfill his request, where he had buried one of his enemies to avenge for the death of his teacher, where he also went to train, and converse with the shadows, and sometimes to daydream, and wondered if the deers that dwelled there grazed on oak leaves and the tranquility was something he may have, without realising it, denied to the both of them forever. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gai-sensei was right, he must live with the consequences of his decisions. But what of others who must also live with it?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The public graves were covered with leaves, the fallen foliage so thick it blanketed over the plaques and gravemarkers of the dead. Neji’s father was not amongst them, though Shikamaru’s father was, and was easy to find. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji felt awkward and out-of-place standing in front of the grave of the Konoha war-leader, apologising to the dead felt wrong, inappropriate. Yet here he was, doing it again, since last winter, when Shikamaru caught him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So he walked away in shame until he spotted the current hokage, silver hair hiking up yet flopping at the same time, standing beside the commemoration stone for the third war, so still it looked as if he had replaced himself with a decoy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji had heard of the almost impossible story of Uchiha Obito’s survival, his folies, and subsequent sacrifice. It had sounded as outlandish and phantasmic as a tale told in theatres—the tsukiyomi robbing the reality of loss from the village, apart, of course, from those who weren’t trapped there, and had to bear the burden of it all. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kakashi saw him, and gave him a faint nod, Neji bowed in return, unsure if he should approach. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘He didn’t have my mark.’ Kakashi said, ‘I thought for the longest time that it had been him, but he did not have my mark.’ Kakashi pulled his sleeve up to show Neji the ginza leaf, the little fan-shaped mark so light it looked like gold-sheened-foil against Kakashi’s pale skin. ‘In the end, I had merely presumed that Obito’s had been mine. I projected his trajectory had he lived out his full life, but it was borrowed time, just like his eye, it never belonged to me.’  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kakashi looked to the sky, ‘Now I have the whole village to protect, his coveted position of hokage, and memories of him to preserve. But, there’s only me, like it always has been. Now that even Gai has found his other half, I am still the only one.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji would rather it had been a dream, the conversation. He recalled all the broken shards of soul across the village, scattered and reformed like imperfect shadows of the foliage of trees, and himself feeling like a shadow in the land of living, having persuaded Shikamaru to remove the tethering to the soul that may very well have altered Shikamaru’s conviction as well. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Kakashi-sama, may I ask for a favour?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji asked, and watched as the lanky scarecrow came to life. </span>
</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. 3.5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>5.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>By the time he entered the forest daylight was beginning to recede as the trees accrued deep shadows. The deer looked at him, alert yet disinterested. Neji bowed, feeling at once revered and fearful when they bowed back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yoshino sat amidst them in the clearing. A doe tended to her deerling as Yoshino stroked her back. The image before him so serene Neji held his breath as he approached. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Without taking her eyes off the animal, Yoshino nodded for him to sit on a log not too far away from her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘So I see you have sought the protection of our village leader to enter this space, it had been quite unnecessary. The deer would have alerted me had you harboured any ill intent towards us.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘If you are here to ask for forgiveness,’ Yoshino intercepted, ‘I assure you your uncle has already done so more than a year ago.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘That—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘And you also don’t need to apologise on a personal level, the actions of my son are judged upon their own merit, young Neji, us Naras, our clan is not tied to the individual’s decision or powers.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Yoshino-san…’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Don’t apologise to me for the wrong you think you may or may not have extended to Shikamaru either. I have received little else other than condolences and pity since the death of my husband, and frankly I tire of it all.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji couldn’t find a way to engage so he dropped his head, and sat there as Yoshino returned her attention to the deer. The mother deer licked the ear of the baby feasting on her, gently, a touch unfamiliar to Neji, much like Yoshino’s relationship with her son. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji grew up in a motherless household: his aunt, like his own mother, had died of a hereditary disease and alongside his dead father the kids only had Hiashi-sama as somewhat of a parent. Neji had presumptions that never managed to invoke a true sensation of motherhood, and it had never been something he could empathise, not for the lack of trying though: through reading, and later observing other kids with their mothers (even Naruto’s rapport with Tsunade-sama), but his efforts were ultimately unsuccessful in comprehending the unconditional protectiveness yet the total lack of understanding that came along with maternal instinct. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It came from Hiashi-sama, Neji decided, his uncle had always been so dogmatically reasonable, even when it came to the death of his father who was his uncle’s own sibling, even at his own expelling from the clan, he had never once seen his uncle lose control. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji thought about the dissatisfaction Shikamaru had expressed regarding the lady in front of him and pondered if it was indeed a luxury to be able to release such rage and have it be absorbed by the all-encompassing love of a parent, like how storms are absorbed into the ocean, and jealousy choked him up in that second, overpowering the guilt he was feeling. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Shikamaru—he didn’t mean any harm.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yoshino made a small noise like a chuckle. ‘I don’t need you telling me what kind of person my son is.’ For the first time she regarded him and her face looked different from how he had expected, placid and bereaved, like it was lacking some essential tier of light.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Shikamaru never does anything with subversive intent, nor does he concern himself with consequences. There’s much you need to learn about my son.’ She said, ‘He’s just like his father, the two of them, ultimate idealists.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji widened his eyes, he would have described them as the exact opposite. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Oh yes, I said it.’ Yoshino continued, ‘They’re lazy, passive, to the point of indolence, but when they set their mind about making something happen, they do anything and everything within and outside of their capabilities to make it a reality, no one else has conviction such as that, with the exception of perhaps your sensei, and his disciple, and now bondmate.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji nodded, recalling his conversation about killing intent with Shikamaru all those years ago.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Shikamaru made up his mind to set you free from the soulbond.’ Yoshino looked away, as if she had heard something from the trees amongst the rustling leaves, but Neji could not sense anything else around them aside from the herd. ‘What else do you think might have prompted him to burn off his own mark?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji paled. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yoshino shook her head. ‘It’s painfully obvious isn’t it, Neji-kun, that the two of you were destined to be drawn to each other. You can choose not to believe it, reject its directive, find your own path, but it’s downright ignorant to dismiss that something more than yourselves is at work here.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji closed his eyes, feeling pain blossom across his stomach where his scars were, the memory of Shikamaru kissing them burning upon his skin, acid burns of his affection. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yoshino breathed out, ‘He never considered much about himself or others, for me, or for you, for that matter. If you choose to be with him, be prepared to feel constantly and extremely frustrated by them lot of ultimately inconsiderate boys.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji twisted his fingers together, ‘Do you think it’s a possibility, me and him?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yoshino shrugged, ‘Doesn’t matter, does it, how I think? As a mother I’m never going to stop worrying, but I also can’t force him to care about what I think. He’s always going to be my child, my offspring, but what does that even mean in the grand scheme of his life? The deerling must always leave its mother, and her the only one who can push it away.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She stroked the head of the nursing mother deer between the two peaked ears, and Neji watched as great droplets of tears rolled out from those large, bulbous eyes—like the animal was cognisant of the impending sorrow of the eventual parting with its young. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Are you trying to find him?’ Yoshino asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji dropped his head. ‘I thought I was, but am beginning to see that I may have been doing the opposite. I—I don’t know how to face him, I’m afraid to do so.’ Neji took a shuddering breath, ‘I have never experienced this before, not even when I realised how brash I had been to attack my cousin, possibly fatally.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yoshino thought for a long time, before she spoke. ‘When Shikamaru was little, he was a troublesome brat, hadn’t learnt how to live in his own head at that time. One day he noticed my mark, and kept asking me questions,’ She bared her wrist where an acorn, just like the one that hung on Shikaku’s portrait in the shrine, rested, so vivid it was as if it were delicately balanced upon her skin, that if Yoshino tilted her hand it would roll off despite its inkiness. ‘So I took him to the statue of Hashirama-sama and Madara-sama in the Valley of the End. It was the first time I saw the boy actually stop and perceive, instead of just devouring information and moving on.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘My uncle told me the soulmark was going to be a symbol of the one destined for me, that it’s a mark of someone I must cherish and be faithful towards.’ Neji didn’t mention that when Hiashi-sama had said that he had looked straight at Hinata then at Neji like it was a matter-of-fact. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji felt a shudder travel down his spine. The idea that his soulmark might be on someone else—like Hinata, for example—was now so completely unfathomable. His understanding of the bond—he had it completely, utterly wrong.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Meanwhile Yoshino replied, ‘My story to Shikamaru was more romantic: I told him of the world tree, the roots that bind all of us, the manifestation of our spirit’s connection to this realm of reality in the form of the mark, and our ultimate search for completion in finding and uniting with the one who bears the imprint of the other half of our soul.’ She let out a bark of bitter laughter: ‘I guess we lie to our children a lot more than we anticipate, tell them stories which we choose to disbelieve as adults.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>‘We all have our choices.’ </span>
  </em>
  <span>Shikamaru had said, accompanying the smell of burning flesh. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji knew, without a shadow of a doubt, where he would be. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Yoshino-san, I—’ Neji stood. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yoshino waved. ‘Go, but Neji-kun—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Yes ma'am.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘If you intentionally hurt him, you have me to answer to.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji bowed deeply, he wanted to vocalise his gratitude but once again found himself at a loss for words.   </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. 3.6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>6.</p><p>
  <span>The Valley of the End was noisy—almost deafeningly so—being the narrow pass for the wind above the onrush of the waterfall. It now sported a disturbing sight: the land bearing deep scars from the battles of distant and recent past inadequately masked by facades of trees clearly planted by wood-release, and the statues of Shodaime and the Uchiha Clan’s ancestor having been mended but still bearing long faults where the cracks once were. Their faces looked different, whether by knowledge bias or actual alteration, they now bore resemblance to Naruto and Sasuke in Neji’s eyes. The millenia-old water washed over the reassembled riverbed, older river and new stone. The entire atmosphere construed and inauthentic—like the shape of Hashirama Senju’s soulmark—a clear glorification of the Land of Fire’s spirit in that it had been made into the shape of the leaf, the symbol for Konohagakure. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji took off his hitai-ate, feeling a sense of unease when he approached the figure perched upon one of the spikes of Uchiha Madara’s hair. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru’s spiky ponytail was a small model of his current place of rest, he was lying on his back, with his hands behind his head, one ankle resting upon a raised knee, the scars on his wrist pink with new flesh, he didn’t acknowledge Neji’s presence, nor did he actively oppose it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji sat a fair distance away, letting the cacophony of water dilute the intensity of the moment. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Did you burn off the soulmark because it was mine?’ He finally broke the silence. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru snorted, ‘Arrogant much, Hyuuga? How do you know if it’s not because I got pine-needles and the thought of Sasuke as my mate was too frightening for me to bear?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Why would Sasuke frighten you, you said that he’s just a spoilt brat.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru tilted his head, glanced at Neji, before turning back to face the clouds. ‘Could have been any number of people I never want to associate with, let alone form a bond, I have a fair share of those on that list, believe it or not.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘But only one who asked you to get the mark removed.’ Neji supplied, </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru frowned. ‘You’re being such a pain in the ass. It doesn’t matter now, does it? At the end of the day, you got rid of yours and I got rid of mine, doesn’t matter why we did it.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji took a breath. ‘Ino told me mine might be the shape of an oak leaf, oak is the Nara genus.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru shrugged, ‘So what if it was? I have cousins, a few of them kunoichis in the making, could have been any of them.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Cut the bull crap, Nara, did you or did you not burn off my mark?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Is it really yours when you no longer have it?’ Shikamaru snapped, ‘When you didn’t want it in the first place?! When you’d rather risk death than to be in another cage of fate which traps you?’ Shikamaru asked in a raspy voice that made the hair on Neji’s neck stand up. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Yes, it does!’ Neji stood, ‘I never wanted my decision to affect others—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru kicked his legs out and sat up, ‘Oh, it’s now a </span>
  <em>
    <span>decision </span>
  </em>
  <span>unintended to affect others, is it? How are you this much of a hypocrite, Hyuuga? Do you honestly think I’ll just willingly sport the mark when I know that the counterpart had been taken away—by myself?! How exactly do you think I should go about this? Hmm? I don’t exactly know how to pretend to be ignorant to just how unwanted this mark is to you!’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji grabbed Shikamaru’s arm, ‘So you did burn off my mark after all, you asshole!’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Asshole?! You’re the one who wanted nothing to do with me!’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I didn’t know!’ Neji cried. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘If you did, would it have changed your decision?!’ Shikamaru glared, his arm still within Neji’s grasp, but he seemed not to be aware of the contact. ‘Face it, Hyuuga, even if you had known, a year ago, you still would have done it.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji shook his head, his hand shaking too much for him to continue holding on to Shikamaru. ‘That, that was different. That, that was before I…’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘You what? Don’t tell me you suddenly believe in fate now?’ Shikamaru adjusted his outfit where it had become wrinkled due to Neji’s rough handling. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Before I was in love, you heartless bastard.’ Neji bit his lips, and looked away. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru jumped up, Neji, in his shock, stumbled back and Shikamaru caught him before he slipped and lost his footing. Shikamaru stared at Neji with equal measures of pain and trepidation, little lines gathering between those thin brows, and when Shikamaru reached for his face, Neji didn’t resist. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I fucked up, ok? I know you don’t deserve any of this,’ Shikamaru’s hand felt wet on his face, and Neji realised that it was because of his own tears. ‘I didn’t want anyone hurting themselves over me, least of all you—I—’ He shook his head to dislodge the blurring hexagons in front of his eyes as the words jumbled up in his mouth. ‘And I’m not trying to guilt you into anything or point out that you’ve made a mistake or anything like that, that’s not what I’m not looking for, I didn’t expect any of this to happen and I certainly didn’t expect to fall for you—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru snorted, Neji glared at him but it made Shikamaru’s grin split across his face. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘This is the worst love confession I’ve ever received.’ He told Neji. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘You bastard,’ Neji wiped at his face, beneath the wetness his cheeks were burning. ‘Do you have no sympathy?’  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru stepped closer and placed his other hand on Neji’s nape. ‘My last girlfriend fanned me into a wall, what do you think?’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘You asshole, mentioning your ex when I’m trying to tell you how I feel.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Well, you’re the one who got your bondmate to unknowingly remove your soulmark and almost tarnished his hands with your own life, so what do you have to say to that, huh?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji, despite himself, felt his own face widen into a grin, mirroring Shikamaru’s, he placed a hand against Shikamaru’s chest, feeling Shikamaru’s blood pulsing beneath his skin. ‘We’re a pair for sure, the stupid asshole and arrogant idiot.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru wiped at Neji’s face with his thumb. ‘How did we end up doing something this foolish? We’re supposed to be geniuses of the group.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I talked to Ino, and your mother, and it was blatantly obvious to the both of them—us.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru leant his forehead against Neji’s, ‘You talked to Ino? I’m sorry you had to do that.’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji shook his head. ‘She had a point.’ Both of his hands were around Shikamaru’s neck now as he laced his fingers behind his nape, he never realised that Shikamaru had grown slightly taller than him and the height was not just because of the hairdo. ‘I didn’t know what I was doing, I had a preconception and acted upon my fears, and dragged you down with me—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru kissed him, on the mouth, a quick press of soft full lips against Neji’s own to steal Neji’s breath away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Stop apologising already, I’m not going to accept it. You told me you don’t need a mark to know how you feel about someone, well, on top of an ignorant asshole, are you also going to be a liar?’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji suddenly remembered Shikamaru’s words the first time they took their relationship to the next level, after the last ever game of shogi they played, and repeated them back to Shikamaru, against his lips. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I’m nothing, Shikamaru, you took it all from within me.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru grabbed him and bore them down upon the sloped bouldery surface of the statue, as he devoured Neji’s words, his tongue finding its way into Neji’s mouth to take breath after breath from Neji’s body until Neji was dizzy with the lack of oxygen, lying on the hard stone and squinting at the silhouette of Shikamaru’s spiky ponytail, framed by the residual sunlight. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru stroked Neji’s hair out of his face. ‘How could I have been so blind, I saw my own shadow within you and still could not make the connection that I would bear your mark.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji’s eyes slid shut, ‘We’re both so willfully blind. There was a reason why I thought you were the only one who could help me, because that was my soulmark resonating with its other half, and I ignored it, dismissed everything—all the signs—’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shikamaru kissed his forehead, where the seal was, ‘I’m sorry you ended up with a bondmate who’s me,’ he said.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neji captured Shikamaru’s face within his hands, forcing Shikamaru to look at him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘I’m not.’</span>
</p><hr/><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Please leave me comments so we can scream about these idiots together~</p><p>You can always holla at me on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/ebonynemesisart/">Insta</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/ebonynemesis">twitter</a>, or <a href="https://anemonemimesis.tumblr.com/">Tumblr</a>. </p><p>Love you all and take care of yourselves~~~<br/>-Nemmy</p></blockquote></div></div>
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